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Copyright N°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



WITNESSES TO 
THE WORD 



BY THE 

REV. CHARLES C. JARRELL, A.B., B.D. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

HORACE M. DU BOSE, D.D. 

Book Editor Methodist Episcopal Church, South 



Nashville, Tenn. 

Dallas, Tex.; Richmond, Va. 

Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South 

Smith & Lamar, Agents 

1916 






COPTRIGHT, 1916 
BY 

Smith & Lamar 



JUL 10 1916 
©CI.A431808 



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* 
CONTENTS. '*• 

Page. 

Introduction I 

Synopsis of the Book 5 

CHAPTER I. 
The Witness of History; or, The Trial of the Word. . . 13 

CHAPTER II. 

The Witness of the Word to Itself; or, The Bible from 
Its Own Point of View 34 

CHAPTER III. 

The Witness of Prophecy; or, The Bible and Its 
Christ 56 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Witness of Jesus to the Bible — What Did He 
Say ? 86 

CHAPTER V. 

The Witness of Jesus to the Bible (Continued) — Who 
Was He? or, The Person of Jesus the Supreme Cre- 
dential of Christianity 108 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Witness of the Empty Tomb 143 

CHAPTER VII. 
The Bible the Hope of the World 171 

(in) 



INTRODUCTION. 

Churches, as well as civic communities, have been 
judged by their literature. A Church whose doctrines 
and experiences are virile and with which the cause of 
education and general culture is a living concern will 
naturally and healthily express itself in a literature of 
pertinency. The tendency in this literature will be to- 
ward theology, apologetics, and technical discussion; 
but it will carry a mark and flavor suggestive of the 
standards and spirit of that intellectual culture which 
is always humanity's best expression of itself. In all 
past times intellectual skill has been the servitor of re- 
ligion and its doctrines. Education in its highest form 
has always been thought of as religious and ethical. 
Hebrew culture — its literature, its science, and the 
slender but perfectly developed canons of its art — went 
into the mold with Hebrew religion to bring forth one 
result : the lively and enduring oracles of Scripture. 

The medieval masterpieces are the best repositories 
of medieval doctrine, and the surviving religious medi- 
tations and discussions of those ages furnish some of 
our best models of the art of composition. All this is 
to emphasize the thought that the Church has a literary 
work to do which is not merely that of engrossing its 
creeds, glossing its doctrines, and recording the pro- 
ceedings of its assemblies, but is also that of giving to 
its official and subsidiary writings a dress and savor of 
grace which will both attract and challenge the wider 
world. Theology and religious teaching in general 
need to be written more certainly in the terms of the 

(i) 



2 Witnesses to the Word. 

humanities and more certainly flavored with the insist- 
ency of that which we call literature. It was art in 
painting and architecture which preserved the forms of 
Christianity through an age in which its spirit was well- 
nigh dead. The Renaissance and the Reformation 
awoke together and then went hand in hand. When 
Methodism can put the interpretation of its old-time 
doctrines in the new forms of a literature that com- 
mands the living emotions and sympathies of the race, 
it will begin a new advance upon the world. 

A new time has come, a time of opportunity for the 
writers and thinkers of our country. This new time 
is bringing larger opportunities to the writers of Meth- 
odism. From these opportunities we of the South, 
Church and State, are by no means excluded. The 
invitation to participate is rather a special and a direct 
one. The world, crushed by war, now looks to those 
strong and self-nourished peoples who have preserved 
themselves whole both in body and thought. Indeed, 
the world's literary and thought primacy is now on a 
journey. It will settle with those people who prepare 
for it a place. 

That the present volume, coming from the pen of 
one of the younger representative men of the Church, 
is a distinct contribution to our denominational litera- 
ture is the mature judgment of the writer of this in- 
troduction. It is a fresh, sound, and well-reasoned 
treatment of the fundamental element in our religion, 
the integrity of that revelation upon which rest our 
faith and all things related thereto. With equal confi- 
dence it is held that this volume is distinguished by 
such taste and discrimination in the use of language 



Introduction. 3 

and by such classic sympathies and touches as will 
serve to put it in the class of literature. It cannot fail 
to become a stimulus to a wider study of the transcend- 
ent matters which it discusses and an incentive to other 
of our denominational writers to cultivate the field of 
serious and effective authorship. 

Horace M. Du Bose. 
Nashville, Tenn., June 6, 1916. 



SYNOPSIS OF THE BOOK. 



The First Chapter. 

THE first chapter seeks to trace the trial of the 
Word as Providence has kept it through all 
the emergencies of the past. The Hebrew Scrip- 
tures were preserved through the three destructions 
that came upon Jerusalem ( i ) under Nebuchadnez- 
zar, (2) under Antiochus Epiphanes, (3) and under 
Titus. The same Providence kept the Hebrew and 
Christian Scriptures through the persecutions under 
the Roman emperors, then under the literary and 
critical attacks, as well as through the Gnostic con- 
troversies. 

The contest with traditionalism in the Church did 
not "choke the Word" except for a season. Then 
deism and the "illumination" of the eighteenth cen- 
tury tried the Word. The collapse of the Baur 
criticism is then referred to and the belief expressed 
that the Bible will always vindicate itself as the 
Word of God. 

The Second Chapter. 

The second chapter introduces a copy of the Bible 
as evidence and asks what impression is made on 
the mind by this volume if it is allowed to speak for 
itself and make its own impression. The relations 
that exist between revelation, inspiration, and liter- 

(5) 



6 Witnesses to the Word. 

ature are studied; and it is seen that infallibility is 
a quality that belongs to the revelation rather than 
to the Book. The Church fixed the canon, but did 
not create the revelation. She herself was created 
by the revelation, and both she and it were created 
by the Spirit of the Master. 

The Bible so studied as a whole will impress us 
as follows: 

i. It is a unity. This unity is not factitious, but 
inheres in the very history itself. The book of Gen- 
esis is conscious of being the beginning; the book 
of Revelation is just as conscious of being its close. 
Two Testaments form one volume; sixty-six pam- 
phlets make one book. 

2. The Old Testament is fulfilled in the New. 
The outlook of the Old is toward the New. The 
New is conscious of having fulfilled the Old. Not 
only many prophecies were fulfilled, but the mission 
and scope of prophecy itself. 

3. There is evidence of purpose in Israel's history. 
Only what concerns this purpose is told. Covenant 
follows covenant; age follows age; election grows 
more definite, the future goal more clearly seen — 
the purpose is never lost. This thread binds crea- 
tion, Noachian age, patriarchal age, Mosaic age, 
tribal age, prophetic age, etc., all together. "Israel 
has the idea of teleology like a kind of soul." The 
whole Old Testament is provisional and preparatory 
for the glory and the goal yet ahead. 

4. Israel's idea of God is her chief glory. He is 



Synopsis of the Book. y 

a God of promise and keeps his word. He is a God 
of character and demands character of his worship- 
ers — e. g., Micah vi. 8. 

5. The Bible claims to be inspired. This claim is 
consistently maintained throughout. The revelation 
makes the history, and the history holds in trust the 
revelation. The historical character of this revela- 
tion must never be lost sight of. 

The chapter closes with an illustration of how 
many stones make one building in obedience to the 
builder's art, because the architect is one. The Bible 
is stamped like bond paper with the features of its 
one divine Author. 

The Third Chapter. 

This chapter is based on the assumption that the 
whole Bible bears witness to Christ. The Bible, 
taken as a whole, presents the fact of redemption 
and the features of the Redeemer. This bird's-eye 
view of revelation is the method of Jesus, who uses 
it in his talk on the way to Emmaus. Thus seen, 
the entire Old Testament is a provisional order, a 
prophetic preparation for the coming King and the 
coming kingdom. Such prophecy as this is peculiar 
to Israel's religion. It is not the marvel-mongering 
of the pagan predictions, but a moral movement 
bound up always with the prospects of the kingdom 
of God. Such prophecy was needed to make history 
the medium of the revelation. The prophet was the 
interpreter of God's will to men. To the study of 



8 Witnesses to the Word. 

the past he brought insight ; to the future, foresight ; 
and based both in the will of God. 

The predictive element is an inseparable part of 
Hebrew prophecy. These predictions ran in three 
great lines of thought: 

i. The oracles against the heathen nations: (i) 
Nineveh, (2) Moab and Ammon, (3) Edom, (4) 
Egypt, (5) T Y re > ( 6 ) Babylon. 

2. The oracles against the Jewish nation. The 
various destructions of Jerusalem and captivity fore- 
told; the final dispersion of the Jews foretold; the 
restoration from Babylon foretold and the final re- 
demption of the race. 

3. The Messianic prophecies. The Messianic hope 
begins in the protevangelium, runs through the cov- 
enants, the patriarchal promises, the Mosaic age, 
and comes to flower in the writing prophets and the 
Psalms. Many of these are cited. The suffering 
Servant and reigning King seem contradictory until 
both fuse in Jesus Christ. Messianic prophecy gives 
to the Old Testament its marvelous unity, self -con- 
sistency, and comprehensiveness, as Professor Flint 
remarks. 

The Fourth Chapter. 

The title is, "The Witness of Jesus to the Bible." 
It is stated that the Old Testament throws the most 
light on Jesus, and Jesus is the best possible authority 
on the matter of what the Bible is. This is shown to 
be, not a vicious circle, but mere fact. 



Synopsis of the Book. 9 

It is shown that Jesus puts his imprimatur on the 
Old Testament, taken as a whole and in its broad 
divisions, and passages are cited to show that Jesus 
stamps it all and each general division of it as divine. 

The relation of Jesus to the Old Testament is then 
studied, and it is seen that Jesus handles the Old 
Testament in a free and creative way. He says in 
the presence of the old law and modern duty, "I 
say unto you," and assumes the task of Supreme 
Legislator and Judge. 

It is then shown that Jesus not only indorses the 
Old Testament by direct appeal to it and by putting 
his own authority back of it, but he indorses the New 
Testament by anticipation. He took more pains to 
provide for the record of revelation than to shape 
the outlines of his Church, and he stamps the apos- 
tolic recollection of what he said and the apostolic 
expositions of the gospel as inspired and divine. 

It is then shown that the New Testament as we 
have it is this primitive apostolic body of doctrine. 

The Fifth Chapter. 

This chapter asserts that Christianity must have 
a cause and that Christ is the only adequate explana- 
tion. This is the explanation the New Testament 
offers. It considers the Person of Jesus as the su- 
preme credential of Christianity. It is shown that 
the life that is sketched in the Gospel is different 
from all human lives. It is unique in the story of 
his birth, life, works, death, and resurrection. 



io Witnesses to the Word. 

His method, manner, spirit, habits of thought 
and speech are shown to be different. It is shown 
that the character consistently exhibits a more than 
human ideal of life, conduct, love, and sacrifice. 
This character is worked out and not described. 
The question, "Who is this character ?" is answered 
by an appeal to the self -revelation which Jesus makes 
in word and deed. It is shown that the Church's 
attitude toward Jesus is justified by the New Testa- 
ment attitude toward him and that this in turn is 
justified by the estimate Jesus has o*f himself and of 
his work. This is shown by an appeal to his con- 
sciousness as manifested in such crises as the bap- 
tism, temptation, calling of disciples, giving of law, 
forgiving sin, revealing God, teachings concerning 
himself, his Sonship to the Father as Son of God 
and himself as the Son of man, as well as his work 
as Redeemer of the race. 

The question is then raised, "Is this character 
real ?" It is shown that Jesus could not be a literary 
creation. There are four Gospels, but one Christ. 
Four independent forgers could never have made the 
one Christ ; and four confederate forgers would nev- 
er have left the four Gospels with their synoptic dif- 
ficulties, minor discrepancies, etc. No one existed 
who could have created the Jesus of the Gospels 
without making him Jew or Greek or Roman. The 
Jesus of the Gospels is universal, is the Son of man. 

His character is not mythical. The laws of 



Synopsis of the. Book. 1 1 

myths are cited, and it is shown that the Gospels are 
not mythological. 

The Gospels are not legendary, for Luke begins 
to write histories and Paul to write letters in the 
lifetime of eyewitnesses. There is no room here for 
legends, even if legends could have made such liter- 
ature as the New Testament. 

The Sixth Chapter. 

The sixth chapter is a study of the resurrection. 
It is shown that belief in the resurrection was the 
foundation of the Church and the subject of apos- 
tolic testimony. It binds together all the New Tes- 
tament as the Messianic hope does the Old Testa^ 
ment. 

Three lines of argument are followed : 
i. Direct testimony. This is considered in each 
Gospel and in the case of Paul. 

2. Indirect evidences, which are all the more im- 
portant because they are unintended. 

3. Circumstantial evidence, such as the existence 
of the Church, the change of the day of rest, and 
the transformation in the character of the apostles. 

Naturalistic explanations do not satisfy the facts. 
Jesus did rise from the tomb. 

The Seventh Chapter. 

This chapter traces the influence of the Bible in 
the Roman world, in the migration of the races, in 
the Dark Ages, in the Middle Ages, in the Reforma- 



12 Witnesses to the Word. 

tion period, and shows that this Book has been the 
hope of the world in the past. Then the modern 
pagan world is studied, and it is shown that only the 
religion of the Bible can meet the moral and spiritual 
needs of the race. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Witness of History ; or. The Trial of 
the Word. 

THE Bible is as solitary among books as Jesus is 
among men. Each bears witness to the other, 
and both together complete the revelation of re- 
demption. 

The Bible is solitary in its origins, for it grew 
together as no other book has ever done. It is soli- 
tary in its history; for no book has ever been read, 
copied, translated, persecuted, and preserved like the 
Bible. It is peculiar in the imperishable message 
that it brings, for it reflects humanity and reveals 
God. 

The written and the incarnate Word have both had 
to meet the contradiction of sinners, to face a gen- 
eration faithless and slow of heart to believe, and to 
gain ascendancy over the mind and heart of human- 
ity by the message and life they bring. This fiery 
trial of our faith 1 is not peculiar to one age, nor is 
our generation the first to challenge the Bible to give 
a reason for its claim to be the inspired Word of 
God. This is a "tried stone," like that foundation 
stone laid in Zion, 2 and we need not fear that in 
believing this we shall ever be put to shame. 3 

*i Peter i. 7. 2 Isaiah xxviii. 16. 3 i Peter ii. 6. 

(13) 



14 Witnesses to the Word. 

Three times have these sacred rolls survived the 
overthrow of Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar left nei- 
ther wall nor temple nor palace nor any of the 
houses of the great. The flower of the population 
was carried captive, and only the poor of the land 
were left. Antiochus Epiphanes 1 took Jerusalem 
and endeavored to destroy the Jewish religion. He 
ordered every copy of the sacred books to be de- 
stroyed and the possessor to be put to death with 
utmost cruelty. Titus gave the whole city to the 
torch and sword and took away the "name and na- 
tion" of the Jew; but through each storm of blood 
and fire a divine Hand kept the Word. 

One can but wonder how much valuable litera- 
ture must have perished forever in these disasters. 
The Old Testament mentions books by Jasher, Na- 
than, Gad, and Iddo. One must equally wonder at 
the Providence that preserved out of the wreck these 
books which are sufficient to testify of Him and to 
trace through history the unfolding purpose of re- 
deeming love. 

For over two centuries the Roman Empire tried 
to destroy the Christian and his Holy Scriptures. 
When found together, Book and believer both per- 
ished. The silent lips of the martyred dead preached 
Christ in every city. Their witness was not in vain, 
for the Word of the Lord grew mightily and pre- 
vailed. 

^osephus, "Antiquities," Book XII., Chapter V. 



The Witness of History. 15 

The argument of force failed utterly to arrest the 
growth of the Christian religion, and there were 
some who resorted to the force of argument. Sub- 
tle and skeptical pagans of the second century left 
nothing unsaid to discredit this new and dangerous 
competitor of the senescent paganism of the empire, 
and even more threatening were the internal contro- 
versies that soon arose. Before the young Church 
had formulated her creeds or fixed her canon or 
gained toleration under the government, she was 
plunged into one of the most dangerous controver- 
sies of all her history. The Church has seldom, if 
ever, passed a crisis more critical than the era of the 
Gnostic heresies. Earliest among them was Cerin- 
thus, of Alexandria, contemporary and opposer of 
the Apostle John at Ephesus. Basilides ( A.D. 130) 
and Valentinus (A.D. 150) were renowned Gnostic 
teachers and exercised great influence in their day. 
The name of Marcion has been dim in the memory 
of the Church for fifteen hundred years, but it was 
a name cut deep for a generation. He slashed the 
Gospels in pieces 1 and taught his numerous adher- 
ents that the Old Testament was the work of an 
inferior and immoral deity. He accepted only Paul 
among the apostles and only Luke among the Gos- 
pels, and this he mutilated to make it meet his philos- 
ophy. This Gnostic cult was a subtle Oriental the- 
osophy blended with Greek philosophy, which threat- 

1 Irenaeus, Cont. Haer. 



1 6 Witnesses to the Word. 

ened for a time to penetrate Christianity. Had it 
prevailed, it "would speedily have dissipated histor- 
ical Christianity into phantasies," 1 It was largely a 
controversy about Scripture and was one of the ear- 
liest offers of a. rationalizing philosophy to patronize 
Christianity if it would give up its Bible. But it 
was by means of her historical revelation that the 
Church discovered the true features of her enemy 
and measured the dimensions of the danger she 
faced'. It was her sacred Scriptures which showed 
her the one God, unfolding his purposes of redemp<- 
tion in a progressive revelation, where sin was seen 
to have its origin, not in natural necessity, but in a 
moral fall, and where redemption was seen to culmi- 
nate, not in a phantom Christ, but in a real incarna- 
tion. These proved to be barriers too strong to be 
swept away. 

More easily met, because from without, were the 
literary and critical attacks on the new religion and 
its historical foundations. Its books were subjected 
to the most searching analysis and at a time, too, 
when the latest surviving apostle had not been in 
his grave one hundred years. This second century 
was an intensely literary age and, to some extent, a 
time of religious and ethical revival. Vespasian 
provided for the support of lecturers throughout the 
cities and provinces, schools and universities flour- 
ished, and literature took on a new refinement. 

1 Orr's "Bible under Trial," page 6. 



The Witness of History. 17 

Thought and speech ran in the prevailing forms of 
rhetorical and philosophical discourse and argument. 

Seneca, the elder Pliny, and Plutarch take no no- 
tice of Christianity. Tacitus, Suetonius, and the 
younger Pliny pass it by with small notice and a 
kind of fatigued contempt. Marcus Aurelius calls 
the early Christians the victims of a blind and un- 
thinking enthusiasm. Lucian, in the second half of 
the second century, wrote his "Peregrinus Proteus," 
a sarcastic caricature o>f Christianity, burlesquing 
their virtues and ridiculing their faith in a "cruci- 
fied sophist," as well as their hope of immortality. 

The Church had! small reason to fear an attack 
like this, however brilliant it may have been. A far 
more formidable antagonist was Celsus, who lived 
about the same time. Fisher calls him the "ablest 
of its assailants" ; and Baur says, "He stands behind 
no opponent of Christianity" 1 in "acuteness, in dia- 
lectical aptitude, in many-sided culture, at once phil- 
osophical and general." This Celsus may very well 
be called the Voltaire of the second century. His 
book, "The True Word," is "a masterpiece of attack 
upon the evangelic record." 1 It shows the author 
to have been a master antagonist. It reveals a mi- 
nute analysis of the Christian writings and evinces 
a deliberate purpose to undermine and overthrow 
Christianity by every resource of wit, argument, 

^'Christian History of the First Three Centuries," Volume 
II., page 141. Quoted by Dr. Orr. 

2 "Bible under Trial," Dr. Orr, page 25. 



1 8 Witnesses to the Word. 

and information. "The work of Celsus was written 
in a spirit of intense hatred and spares no thrust 
which criticism, calumny, and sarcasm could sup- 
ply." 1 He mercilessly sifts the resurrection stories 
and attributes the "myth" to the hallucination of a 
"half-frantic woman."' Celsus was followed in this 
by Renan in his "Life of Jesus." 

The book called out an elaborate refutation from 
the mighty Origen in his "Reply to Celsus." The 
book itself has perished and would probably have 
been forgotten but for the extracts preserved in 
Origen's great defense. "So far as we can see, it 
had not the slightest effect in stopping the trium- 
phant progress 'of Christianity in the empire."' 
Porphyry also is preserved to us only in fragments. 
He made it his special effort to invalidate Scripture 
and to disparage the apostles as compared with 
Christ. He was the first to utter the cry, "Back to 
Christ"; and long before Baur he claimed that the 
disagreement of Paul and Peter at Antioch invali- 
dated the authority of both. 

These subtle attempts of the Gnostic theosophy to 
undermine the historical foundations of the faith 
and the searching analysis of its documents by 
learned and literary pagan critics called forth from 
the Christian community a noble literature of apol- 
ogy, much of which has perished. In the second 



1 Sheldon, "Early Church," page 169. 2 Ibid., page 171. 
8 Orr, "Bible under Trial," page 26. 



The Witness of History. 19 

century and in the Roman Empire the whole ground 
was gone over. Christian documents were sifted, 
Christian doctrines were analyzed, and Christian 
foundations were tested. A powerful government, 
a proud philosophy, and a learned array of literary 
talent combined the forces of persecution, ridicule, 
argument, and literary analysis to crush the Chris- 
tian community and to discredit forever the founda- 
tions of its faith. Out of it all the Church came 
with a deeper consciousness of the doctrinal wealth 
of her message and more than ever convinced of 
the worth of her Scriptures as a historical revela- 
tion. With a logic born of history and led by the 
instincts of her inner life, she moved forward to 
formulate her creeds and fix her canon. 

Again we are impressed with the fact that the 
Bible has been a tried Word in all ages. "The past 
is a great instructor as to the power that resides in 
the Bible to survive the assaults made upon it even 
by the most skillful adversaries." 1 

With the coming on of the Dark Ages, after the 
break-up of the Latin civilization, the Bible found 
a new foe, this time in the bosom of the Church. 
Such an age was favorable to the growth of tradi- 
tion. At first its voice was pure and vital, and its 
later corruption is one of the tragedies of Christian 
history. It hardened with the centuries into sacer- 
dotalism and stiffened into papal pretensions, which 

1 "Bible under Trial," James Orr, page 25. 



20 Witnesses to the Word. 

soon rivaled the authority of the rarely read and 
dimly understood Bible, written, as it was, in the 
dead languages. It was portable in the hands of the 
living priesthood and pliant in the hands of the pa- 
pacy, not slow to divine its importance as an instru- 
ment of power. It had the added advantage of be- 
ing brought "up to date." It boasted of unbroken 
continuity. It had a living voice behind it, together 
with the pomp and pretensions of the papal office. 
The papacy guaranteed the purity of the tradition, 
and the tradition exalted the pretensions of the pa- 
pacy. The Dark Ages were just the playground 
for such a game. As the tradition grew more and 
more away from the written Word, it began to be 
seen that either the word of Scripture or the word 
of tradition must be the supreme rule of faith. In 
an age when the Scriptures were little known, it was 
easy for the living voice of tradition, calling itself 
the voice of .the Church, to assert and exercise su- 
preme authority over the conscience. The written 
Word passed largely out of the knowledge of the 
Church. The very monks that possessed the manu- 
scripts must in many cases have known little about 
the value of the treasures they possessed. Many a 
precious parchment must have met the fate which 
the Sinaitic manuscript barely missed when rescued 
by Tischendorf even so late as 1859. When the 
young scholar Luther first saw a copy of the Bible, 
it made an epoch in his life. 

As the Middle Ages drew to a close and pious 



The Witness of History, 21 

scholars began to translate the Word into the ver- 
nacular of the various nations, the spirit of tradi- 
tion, seeing its kingdom about to be taken away, in 
a voice vibrant with passion and persecution said, 
"No !" The Bible was not to be given into the lan- 
guage of the laity and was not to be read by them. 
The right of private interpretation of Scripture was 
bitterly fought, which means that the authority of 
the Bible was contested in the name of tradition. 
When the Church herself sought to muffle the 
Word, when the Roman cross was succeeded by 
Roman fagots and Rome of Caesar was rivaled by 
Rome of Peter, the Bible began to be again a tried 
Word, as in the ages of the past. But the Reform- 
ers, aided by the printing press, multiplied copies of 
the Scripture faster than they could be destroyed. 
They succeeded at last in flinging open the gates to 
the knowledge of Holy Scripture, and joyfully the 
enfranchised Church entered on its inheritance. 
Again the Word came forth like silver tried in a 
furnace, purified seven times. 

The Renaissance awakened the mind and soul of 
Europe, and the Reformation effected the emancipa- 
tion of the human intellect. "Philosophy and sci- 
ence made rapid strides, and erelong the seeds of a 
new rationalism began to be sown in the bosom of 
the Church with effects disastrous to reverent faith 
in the Scriptures/' 1 This "older rationalism" made 

*Dr. Orr, "Bible under Trial," page 7. 



22 Witnesses to the Word. 

the eighteenth century its special field and found a 
scholastic Protestantism ill prepared to resist. 

In Germany it took the form of the "Illumina- 
tion." In France Voltaire was its "very eye." 
Moved by a "vehement and blinding antipathy" to 
the Christian faith, he attacked the Scriptures with 
a fury confident of success. This oracle of litera- 
ture, this "eye of the eighteenth century illumina- 
tion," has passed with his sixty books out of the 
life of men ; but the Bible lives on because it has a 
message for the world. 

In England this eighteenth century rationalism 
took the form of a proud and all-but-triumphant 
deism which for a time "made Christianity almost 
a name of mockery in cultivated circles." 1 Joseph 
Butler, Bishop of Durham, says in the advertise- 
ment prefixed to his famous "Analogy" : "It is come, 
I know not how, to be taken for granted by many 
persons that Christianity is not so much a subject of 
inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be 
fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if in the 
present age this were an agreed point among all 
people of discernment; and nothing remained but to 
set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, 
as it were by way of reprisals, for its having so long 
interrupted the pleasures of the world." 

Archbishop Seeker says : "Christianity is now rid- 
iculed and railed at with very little reserve and the 

'"Bible under Trial," Dr. Orr, page 8. 



The Witness of History. 23 

teacher of it without any at all." "A Proposal for 
a National Reformation of Manners," published on 
the eve of the eighteenth century (1694), says: 
"Our light looks like the evening of the world." 
This exultant deism was served by wit and de- 
fended by logic. It captured literature, colored 
the magazines, stained the common speech, and 
drenched the very altars of the Church. 1 The satire 
of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who reports a 
plan on foot to take the "nots" out of the Ten Com- 
mandments and put them in the Apostles' Creed, 3 
well represents the tone of English society in this 
deistic century. What brought deliverance to the 
forces of revealed religion in that age? What ex- 
plains the distance between the England of that 
century and the England of the nineteenth century, 
with Tennyson and Browning bringing the breath 
of the Spirit into literature, with its social and po^ 
litical reforms, its evangelical awakening, its mis- 
sionary era, its Bible diffusion, and its home evan- 
gelization? It is useless to multiply testimonies to 
the fact that it was the Wesleyan Revival, a revival 
of Biblical preaching and of Scriptural religion, that 
furnished to England the forces of spiritual ascend- 
ancy. 3 

This revival gave evangelical Christianity the vic- 

1<< Wesley and His Century," Fitchett, page 142. 
2 Ibid., page 146. 

3 Macaulay, Southey, Buckle, Leckey, Green, Birrel; quoted 
by Fitchett, "Wesley and His Century," page 2. 



24 Witnesses to the Word. 

tory over unbelief more than the learned confuta- 
tions of Bishop Butler, who could write the "Anal- 
ogy" to prop a falling Church and forbid John Wes- 
ley to preach to the depraved miners of Kingswood. 
The history of unbelief shows that the spell of infi- 
delity is broken in any age when the Bible gets a 
fresh grip on the hearts and consciences of men. 
"The owls vanish when the daylight reappears." 
Thus passes the imposing deism of Morgan, Boling- 
broke, and Hume. 

It passes, but it reappears in the critical schools 
of Germany. In his "Founders of Criticism" Dr. 
Cheyne traces the great indebtedness of the German 
critical movement to English deism. 1 The fruit of 
the one has been almost as bitter as the fruit of the 
other. 

An instructive object lesson as to the power of 
the Bible to vindicate itself in the face of an impos- 
ing array of radical scholarship is presented in the 
history of the Tubingen school, with Ferdinand 
Christian Baur (1792-1860), "a man of great learn- 
ing, ability, and conscientiousness," at its head. 
Baur proclaimed his system as the "critical" as 
opposed to the "uncritical" view, and its advocates 
looked with scorn on all who refused to accept its 
conclusions. The prestige of the school was great 
about the middle of the last century. Attracting to 



^'Founders of Criticism," pages 1, 2. Quoted by Dr. Orr in 
'Problems of the Old Testament." 



The Witness of History. 25 

itself "a band of able scholars, men like Schwegler, 
Zeller, Hilgenfeld, A. Ritschl, and Samuel David- 
son, it ruled the critical world for a generation/' 
The whole Tubingen theory is based on one great 
assumption which is the pillar of the whole. Ac- 
cording to this hypothesis, the early Church was 
torn into two parties, the Petrine and the Pauline, 
in deadly conflict with each other. This conflict is 
held to have shaped the history of the New Testa- 
ment Church. This history became apparent to crit- 
ical — that is, Tubingen — eyes by reading between 
the lines of New Testament literature. The book of 
Acts, for example, emanates from a late, second 
century source and is written to gloss over the dif- 
ferences between Paul and the older apostles. It is 
not contemporary with the events it records, is no 
true picture of the primitive Church, and is the 
product of a conciliatory "tendency" after the acute 
stages of the controversy had subsided. Then he 
begins to dig into the other literature of the New 
Testament for facts in support of his central thesis. 
He fixes first the early and authentic books and traces 
through them the schism which rent and almost 
wrecked the early Church. This primitive and gen- 
uinely apostolic literature consists of four epistles 
attributed to Paul — Galatians, First and Second 
Corinthians, and Romans — and the Apocalypse, at- 
tributed to John. Baur claimed that all the older 

x Dr. Orr, "Bible under Trial," page 27. 



26 Witnesses to the Word. 

apostles were against Paul, that Galatians 1 presents 
a primitive picture of a clash at the great Jerusalem 
Council, and that Acts 2 is a late attempt to gloss over 
the ugly scar. "The Apocalypse breathes through- 
out," he said, "a spirit of unmistakable hostility to 
Paul." So John 3 intends expressly to exclude Paul 
from "the names of the twelve apostles of the 
Lamb" written in the foundations of the Holy City. 
The mother Church at Jerusalem, with all the older 
apostles and "the many thousands of Jews, all zeal- 
ous of the law," 4 is on one side ; and Paul, with his 
Gentile converts, is on the other side of the almost 
fatal controversy. The conflict began in Antioch 
in some disputes over the circumcising of Paul's 
new converts. 5 It held the attention of the Jerusa- 
lem Council, 6 which failed to find a permanent set- 
tlement. At Antioch 7 there occurred the final break 
between Peter and Paul and their respective parties. 
Galatians, First and Second Corinthians, and Ro- 
mans were written by Paul to defend his position, 
the Apocalypse of John representing the Judaistic, 
or Petrine, point of view. These books cover the 
genuine history of primitive Christianity. The oth- 
er books of the New Testament represent a post- 
apostolic period and emanate from conciliatory tend- 
encies. The Gospel of Matthew represents the Jew- 



1 Chapter ii. 2 Chapter xv. 3 Revelation xxi. 14. 4 Acts xxi. 
20. 5 Acts xv. 1. 6 Acts xv. 6. 'Galatians ii. 11. 



The Witness of History. 2J 

ish standpoint as it begins to moderate. Luke and 
the Acts are from the Pauline point of view, "writ- 
ten in the interests of conciliation." 1 Mark is a neu- 
tral Gospel, based on Matthew and Luke. (The 
newer synoptical criticism reverses this relation.) 
Epistles like Ephesians and Colossians are "concil- 
iatory." The Gospel of John, with its elevated 
Gnosticism and metaphysical serenity, is late (160 
170). 

The effect of this was to lift New Testament his- 
tory clear into the second century, so that it becomes 
late, unreliable, and discredited with prejudicial 
tendencies. A similar result is attained in the Well- 
hausen criticism, when, as Duhm boasts, by the 
transference of a single source (the priestly law) 
into the post-exilian time, at one stroke the Mosaic 
period is "wiped out." 

This school captivated for a time the advanced 
spirits in theology. 2 The simplicity and ease of the 
method, the splendid results it achieved, and the 
happy combinations it enabled one to make gave to 
the men who used it a sense of power and of new 
discoveries and rallied a brilliant band of scholars 
round the master. Very much the same thing is 
happening now in the Wellhausen school, with its 
great vogue and almost uncontested triumphs. 

The method of Baur seemed right, and the proof 



1<( Place of Christ in Modern Theology/' Fairbairn, pages 
268-273. 2 Ibid. 



28 . Witnesses to the Word. 

seemed clear. The analytical power with which he 
sifted his sources and the imaginative genius with 
which he reconstructed the fabrics of history seemed 
nothing short of marvelous. His theory, like Well- 
hausen's, fascinated by "the skill with which it 
grouped its material in support of a central thesis 
and by the easy key it seemed to afford to many dif- 
ficult phenomena." 1 The achievement of Baur 
seemed colossal and complete. The New Testament 
seemed utterly discredited, as far as furnishing reli- 
able records of the Gospel history was concerned. 
But soon criticism began to pull down what criticism 
had built up. The weakness of the theory was its 
very completeness. Its simplicity was its snare. It 
had to stand together or fall together. The progress 
of discovery and criticism pushed the literature of 
the New Testament back into the first century. Paul's 
epistles have been given back to him almost without 
exception. The case of the fourth Gospel has been 
especially interesting and instructive. In spite of a 
reliable tradition, the Tubingen criticism put the 
fourth Gospel very late (A.D. 170). "The arro- 
gance of these assertions," says Dr. Fairbairn, "was 
equal to the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian 
Creed." 2 To be unwilling to use these Tubingen 
formulas, to refuse to believe in the discoveries that 
turned to gold at their touch, "was to be adjudged 



x Dr. Orr's "Bible under Trial," page 28. 

2 "Place of Christ in Modern Theology," page 272. 



The Witness of History. 29 

an ignoramus or a charlatan or, worst of all, an 
apologist." In 1842 the long-lost book of Hyppo- 
lytus (200 A.D.), "A Refutation of All Heresies," 
was discovered. 1 This book made it plain that the 
great Gnostic Basilides (125 A.D.) had founded 
his system on the fourth Gospel. He quotes, as 
from the accredited Gospel story, the words found 
in our John i. 9. One fact like this from history as 
it really was can chase a thousand theories of history 
as it might have been, and two can put ten thousand 
to flight. And here is the second. In 1853 a com- 
plete manuscript of the heretical "Clementine Hom- 
ilies," composed about the middle or latter part of 
the second century, was found. This manuscript 
contained a plain reference to the story of the man 
born blind. 2 Most interesting in this connection is 
the case of Tatian's "Diatessaron." Tradition as- 
serted, and evidence existed, that Tatian had written 
a harmony of the four Gospels, called "Diatessa- 
ron." The absence of the book was held to discredit 
the positive tradition. The book, it was said, never 
existed; or if it did exist, it was not a harmony; or 
if it was a harmony, it was not a harmony of the 
four Gospels; or if it was a harmony of the four, 
it was not a harmony of the four Gospels as we 
have them now. In 1888 an Arabic translation 
of the "Diatessaron" itself was brought to light. 
It begins with the stately sentence, "In the begin- 

*Dr. Orr's "Bible under Trial," page 36. 2 John ix. 1-41. 



30 Witnesses to the JVord. 

ning was the "Word/" 1 It was found to be a har- 
mony of our four Gospels. Faced by the facts, the 
school, with its pretentious tendencies, beat a re- 
treat. A. Ritschl broke with it in 1857 and founded 
later the Ritschlian School of Theology, which is 
represented by such scholars as W. Hermann, Julius 
Kaftan, and A. Harnack. Prof. W. M. Ramsay 
gave Baur up long ago to become a defender of 
Luke's title to the rank of a first-class historian. 
Even before the death of Baur, in i860, ''his school 
had in reality ceased to be.'" 2 

Settled results! Settled when? By whom? How 
long will they be settled? In 1906 ( Literature :'- 
tung, July 18) Professor Schurer declares that "all 
the representatives of the critical view of things 
were at one in holding that the author of the 'we' 
source [in the Acts] and the author of the Acts are 
to be distinguished, because the latter, on account of 
the glaring marks of unhistoricity in his work, can- 
not be a companion of Paul." At this Dr. A. Har- 
nack says: "So quickly does criticism forget and 
in so partisan a spirit does it stiffen in its hypothe- 
sis !"' He says further, in his preface, "Criticism 
has gone wrong, and tradition is right" ; and he re- 
minds his readers that, ten years before, he had said 
that '''in the criticism of the sources of the oldest 



\John i. I. 

"Fairbaim, "Place of Christ in Modern Theology," page 275. 

c "Luke : Physician, Author of Third Gospel.''' etc, page 5. 



The Witness of History. 31 

Christianity we are in a movement backward to tra- 
dition." Harnack cites the English scholar, Dr. 
Moulton, on his side of this controversy and 
calls him "the best authority on New Testament 
Greek." 1 , 

The Bible has suffered nothing in the past from 
those who have sought to interpret or reconstruct it 
as a mere man-made Book or to overthrow it as an 
enemy of true culture. When Wellhausen brings 
his "antisupernatural" bias to the study of the Old 
Testament, and when he seeks to reconstruct the 
whole history around his theory of the evolution 
of religion in Israel and to build a whole system of 
dates and development on his dogma of the central- 
ization of worship, we need not hesitate to say that 
the man who throws himself against this stone shall 
be broken, and his theories shall be ground to pieces. 
As for the Wellhausen hypothesis, the critics are 
again beginning to pull down what the critics have 
built up. 

Do not these past experiences of the Bible con- 
vince us of its power to vindicate itself as the re- 
vealed Word of God? Do they not raise the pre- 
sumption in the mind and awaken faith in the soul 
that it will come through the "fiery trial" of this 
present-day "purified seven times"? The newer 
sciences have furnished many weapons for modern 

lc 'Neue Untersuchungen zur Apostelgeschichte," Leipzig, 
191 1, footnote on page 2. 



32 Witnesses to the Word. 

skepticism, but the most distinguished scientists 
have almost always been men of an eminently reli- 
gious tone of mind. 1 As regards the bearing of 
"evolution" on religion, the air is certainly clearer 
than it was twenty-five years ago. As regards the 
attack of the radical criticism on the Old Testament, 
it is well to note how such men as Gunkel and 
Winckler, in the interest of a newer radicalism, are 
beginning to regard the "Wellhausen dogma as out 
of date. It is more interesting to note how such 
leading archaeologists as Sayce, Hommel, Halevy, 
and Ditlef-Xielson have broken with the Wellhausen 
theory, which most of them had earlier accepted. 2 
"The distinguished Dr. Matheson," so says Dr. W. 
Robertson Nicoll in the British Weekly Septem- 
ber 6, 1906, "after hearty concurrence in the proc- 
esses and results of the higher criticism as expound- 
ed by Prof. W. R. Smith and in the doctrine of 
evolution, came in late life to disbelieve in the high- 
er criticism and in the doctrine of evolution, at least 
in its extreme form/' 

The man to whom the Bible has become the Word 
of God has an assurance in himself. Samuel Wes- 
ley on his deathbed said : "The inward witness, my 
son, the inward witness — that is the strongest proof 
of Christianitv." In the lisrht of that witness he 
was able to say: "The Christian faith will surely 



1 Huxley, quoted by Spencer. "Education," page 90. 
£ "Bible under Trial.*' Dr. Orr, page 19. 



The Witness of History. 33 

revive in this kingdom. You shall see it, though I 
shall not." 1 "All flesh is as grass. . . . The 
grass withereth, and the flower thereof f alleth away : 
but the word of the Lord endureth forever." 2 

1 "Wesley and His Century," Fitchett, page 91. • 

2 1 Peter i. 24, 25. 

3 



CHAPTER II. 

The Witness of the Word to Itself; or, The 
Bible from Its Own Point of View. 

'TpHE Bible is the literature of revelation. It is 
■■■ an inspired literature, for only such could con- 
stitute a revelation. Inspiration is the manward 
movement of God's Spirit and the God ward move- 
ment of man's spirit, and the inspired life is the 
organ of the revelation. The idea of revelation is 
a necessary part of our religion; for unless a man 
believes that God will speak to him, he will not at- 
tempt to speak to God. 

All the great religions have been book religions. 
The Hindu has his Vedas; the Parsee, his Zend- 
Avesta; the Buddhist, his Tripitikas; the Moham- 
medan, his Koran; and the Christian, his Bible. 
The Bible differs from all other sacred books, be- 
cause its revelation is different. The Bible is the 
literature of that revelation of redemption in the 
old and new covenants of which Jesus Christ is the 
Redeemer. 

This revelation embodies itself in literature, char- 
acter, worship, or institutions and may be oral or 
written. When it takes shape in the written record, 
it is not a mere collection of men's ideas about God 

(34) 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 35 

nor men's best philosophy of life, but a revelation in 
life and history of God, who reveals through men, 
institutions, and events his unfolding purposes and 
his ultimate will. 

It is the life that reveals; it is the Spirit that in- 
spires. Always and everywhere through life and 
through the Spirit does the literature O'f revelation 
live again and reveal the living Word. The touch 
of the Spirit is the knock at the sound of which "it 
shall be opened," and the Master issues "from the 
Word, where, as in a shrine, he lives in immortal 
youth." 1 

It is God that speaks in the revelation, rather than 
the revelation speaking for God. Inspiration is as 
necessary to us who read as it was to those who 
wrote, if we are to hear the voice of God. Unless 
the Spirit be upon the reader and the record, the 
Word will not reveal. It is only half the truth to 
say that God has spoken in the Word. God speaks 
to him that has an ear to hear. 

The Christian revelation is the history of redemp^ 
tion, culminating in the history o>f the Redeemer. 
The Scriptures "may be described as the mode by 
which God, as he is Christ, lives for the faith of the 
Church and before the mind of the world. They, 
as it were, so impersonate, immortalize, and univer- 
salize the consciousness of Christ that it can exer- 

1 Fairbairn, "Place of Christ," page 499. 



36 Witnesses to the Word. 

rise everywhere and always its creative and nor- 
mative functions." 1 

But the Bible is a book as well as a revelation. 
As a revelation it is divine; as a book it is human. 
The revelation bears the imprimatur of the divine 
hand; the book bears the signature of the human 
hand, "the salutation of me, Paul, with mine own 
hand." 2 The revelation is the product of the Spirit's 
inspiration; the book is the work of the "holy men 
of God" who received the Word in many fragments 
and in many fashions. 

To the Bible as a revelation authority belongs, 
and of it infallibility can be affirmed. As a revela- 
tion it speaks the language of God; as a book it 
speaks the language of man's heart and mind, his 
love, fear, and hope, and speaks this language with 
a human accent and under human limitations. No 
angel could ever have said : "Like as a father pitieth' 
his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear 
him." Only human life and human speech can re- 
veal God to men; so he took not upon himself the 
nature or speech of angels. The Bible speaks a 
human language, though it brings a divine message. 
No one who compares the seventeen hundred horse- 
men in 2 Samuel viii. 4 with the seven thousand in 
1 Chronicles xviii. 4, or the seven hundred chariot- 
eers in 2 Samuel xxiii. 8 with the three hundred 



1 Fairbairn, ''Place of Christ," page 499. 
2 2 Thessalonians iii. 17. 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 2)7 

slain in i Chronicles xi. n, or the forty thousand 
stalls of i Kings iv. 26 with the four thousand 
stalls of 2 Chronicles ix. 25, etc., will fail to under- 
stand that in the received texts of the Bible there 
are apparently contradictions in such matters as 
chronologies, tribal records, and military statistics. 

Matthew Henry said years ago, referring to the 
genealogies of Chronicles: "As to the difficulties 
that occur in this, 1 Chronicles viii. 1-32, and the 
foregoing genealogies, we need not perplex our- 
selves. I presume that Ezra took them as he found 
them in the books of the kings of Israel and Judah, 
according as they were given in by the several tribes, 
each observing what method they thought fit. 
Hence some ascend, others descend; some have 
numbers affixed, others places; some are shorter, 
some are longer; some agree with other records, 
others differ; some, it is likely, were torn, erased, 
and blotted, others were more legible. Those of 
Dan and of Reuben were entirely lost. This holy 
man wrote as he was moved by the Holy Ghost; 
but there was no necessity for the making up of the 
defects of these genealogies by inspiration/' 1 "In 
such cases," says Dr. Orr, "inspiration does not 
create the materials of its record, but works with 
those it has received. In strictness, the providing 
and preserving of sound historical material for the 
sacred record is the work of Providence rather than 

Commentary in loco. 



38 Witnesses to the Word. 

that of inspiration; and a wonderful Providence it 
has been ! Inspiration is a free, living force which 
informs and molds the material thus received for 
the ends which God designs in his written Word." 
Infallibility belongs to the revelation rather than to 
the book. The book is human, the revelation is di- 
vine ; and infallibility in the revelation is not depend- 
ent on infallibility in the book. Of the book we 
affirm veracity, trustworthiness, uniqueness, or in- 
destructibility. Of the revelation we affirm infalli- 
bility. This is not a distinction without a differ- 
ence; for the revelation is the book plus the "in- 
ward witness," the Spirit's guidance, and the living 
Christ. 

Infallibility in the revelation belongs to- matters 
where infallibility becomes a necessity and where it 
appears in the highest degree reasonable. I mean 
the conveyance of God to the soul and the quicken- 
ing of the soul with the life of God, making wise 
unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Je- 
sus, being profitable for doctrine, reproof, correc- 
tion, and instruction in righteousness, that the man 
of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto 
all good works. 2 As a book the Bible is the product 
of a canonizing process that continued in the early 
Church and took final shape A.D. 307 at the third 
Council of Carthage. But the Bible is not, there- 
fore, the creation nor the creature of the Church, for 

la Bible under Trial," page 275. 2 2 Timothy iii. 15-17. 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 39 

it is by the preaching of the Word that the Church 
has come into being, and by that also she renews and 
standardizes her life. The canonizing process did 
indeed constitute the book, but it simply recognized 
the revelation. It is not a revelation because it was 
canonized; it was canonized because it was recog- 
nized as a revelation. Christ created the Scriptures 
as he created the Church. With the aid of these 
Scriptures we stand in the presence of the Founder 
and find his vision of the sanctified society which he 
called his kingdom. "They have the prior existence, 
owe everything to the Master, and do everything for 
the Church." 1 

In short, as a book the Bible is the subject of tex- 
tual revision (lower criticism), historical analysis 
(higher criticism), theological and literary interpre- 
tation, and the canonizing process of the Church. 
The sure and better instincts of the Church will 
always welcome that scholarship which trains "men 
to read with larger eyes the books and peoples of 
the past." 2 "What it does and decides may be 
wrong, but the wrong must be proved by ether and 
better scholarship." 8 

The Bible should be allowed to give its own ac- 
count of itself, to make its own impression. If this 
is done, it will be proved to be its own best witness. 
In our day of literary analysis and critical dissect- 

lu Place of Christ in Modern Theology," page 505. 
2 Fairbairn's "Place of Christ in Modern Theology," page 
504. s Ibid. 



40 Witnesses to the Word. 

ing rooms this is necessary to keep us from losing 
that impression which the Bible as a zi'hole has al- 
ways made on the faith and mind of the Church. 
From such a view arise evidences of its divineness 
and peculiar inspiration so broad-based and deep as 
to furnish a firm foundation for a satisfied reason 
and an unshaken faith. 

Taking, then, the Bible as a whole and letting it 
make its own impression on us, we are impressed 
with four or five main facts which are indelibly 
stamped upon it. These are like features wrought 
into the fiber of the Book and inseparable from it. 

Let us consider : 

i. The unity of the Bible. At once we are struck 
with the fact that this book is an organic whole. 
It is, as Jerome called it, a "divine library"; it is, 
as Paul said, composed of two covenants or testa- 
ments ; it did, as Hebrew i. i tells us, come "in many 
fragments and in many fashions" ; and it took more 
than a thousand years to complete the record. But 
these "many fragments," when put together, so 
combine, these two covenants so complete and ex- 
plain each other, that the Book is seen to be an or- 
ganic unity. Never before or since did some sixty- 
six rolls, by some forty authors, composed over a 
period of a thousand years or more, so constitute a 
single theme and so unite to form one indivisible 
volume. Never did a book grow like the Bible. 
Where is the unity in the Koran or sacred books of 
the great ethnic religions ? There is a kind of same- 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 41 

ness of subject in the Zoroastrian Scriptures, but 
the element of growth and historical development is 
lacking. The Bible grows; it grows forward and 
fuller, more perfect and complete ; it grows into one. 
We see the growth, discover the purpose, and mark 
the progress. It begins with a grand beginning — 
"In the beginning God." It moves on in unfolding 
promises, covenants, and commandments from the 
same one God until it culminates in the revelation 
of his Son. It does not stop until it reaches the 
end, and when it reaches the conclusion the end is 
apparent. Take from it Chapters i. to iii. of Gen- 
esis, and the terminus a quo is gone. Take from 
it the last three chapters of Revelation, and you 
rob it of its terminus ad quern. The best evidence 
that the Bible has so grown and so demonstrated 
itself as the living Word is the existence of the Bible 
itself. "No other literature is linked into' one whole 
like this, instinct with one spirit and purpose and 
with all its variety of character and origin, moving 
forward to an unseen yet certain goal." The most 
searching criticism of the Old Testament cannot 
shake the conviction that this book is the inspired 
record of a unique revelation to the world. Says 
Dr. Sanday : "We see these ideas linking themselves 
together, stretching hands, as it were, across the 
ages, the root principles of the Old Testament run- 
ning on into the New and there attaining develop- 
ments which may have been present to the Divine 
Mind, though they could not have been present to the 



42 Witnesses to the Word. 

human instruments whose words went and came at 
its promptings." 1 The reason positively refuses to 
entertain the suggestion that such unity can be the 
accidental outcome of a history which reaches from 
Ur of the Chaldees to the Mamertine prison and 
covers two captivities, with innumerable vicissitudes 
of national fortune and misfortune. The Old Tes- 
tament presents a record moving from age to age, 
yet never losing its thread and ever moving toward 
a glory and a goal felt from the beginning, but 
consciously unrealized until the end is reached. The 
unity in such a record cannot be artificial or acci- 
dental, but is inherent and vital. 

2. The Old Testament is fulfilled in the New. 
How vital this unity is and how organic the growth 
and progress in the revelation are will be best seen 
by considering the fact of fulfillment, when the Old 
and New Testaments are placed together. The ful- 
fillment of individual prophecies will be considered 
later. Take the question in its largest outlines and 
see how overwhelming the conviction becomes that 
in the New Testament we have the goal, the culmi- 
nation, the fulfillment of the Old. Stand beneath 
the shadow of the cross, call to mind the fifty-third 
chapter of Isaiah, and see if that great lamentation 
over the suffering servant of Jehovah might not be 
chanted as a dirge while Jesus bows his head and 

^'Oracles of God," pages 1 18-120. Quoted by Dr. Kirkpat- 
rick in "The Doctrine of the Prophets." 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 43 

gives up the ghost. He utterly, and he alone, ful- 
fills that great vision. He opened not his mouth; 
he had done no violence; he bore the sin of many; 
he shall divide the spoil with the strong. Meek, 
innocent, atoning, triumphant the Servant was to 
be, and the Saviour was, in his passion and resur- 
rection. 

It is not all the truth to say that many prophecies 
have been fulfilled. The whole mission and scope 
of prophecy have been fulfilled. We note the steady 
outlook of Israel and her hope. "The set of their 
faces is forward." Manifold disappointments do 
not dim the vision; national baekslidings do not 
break the thread. The golden age for Israel and 
through Israel for the world is yet ahead. The di- 
vine purpose moves forward toward a goal. There 
is a distinct Old Testament consciousness of this. 
The kingdom and its King and the tabernacle and 
temple, with their priest and prophet, are provision- 
al and prophetic "figures for the time then present" 
and hence temporary and incomplete. 1 "There is 
growth in the Old Testament from the patriarchal 
stage to the Mosaic and from the Mosaic to the 
prophetic; but it is like the plant developing from 
stalk to bud and from bud to flower — there is a 
final stage yet to come, that of the ripened fruit." 2 
Says Dr. Dillmann : "This religion of the people of 



a Hebrews ix. 9. 

2 Orr, "Problem of the Old Testament," page 33. 



44 Witnesses to the Word. 

Israel everywhere points beyond itself, exhibiting 
itself as a work begun which lacks its final perfec- 
tion, and so compels us in the nature of the case to 
apprehend it in relation to Christianity as that in 
which it is perfected." 1 The covenant of external 
ordinances is to become inward and spiritual. The 
circumcision made with hands is become the circum- 
cision of the heart. Particular blessings to Israel 
are to result in blessings to the whole world. One 
of its earliest promises said, "In thee shall all the 
nations of the earth be blessed" ; and one of its latest 
said: "Gentiles shall come to thy light." The Old 
Testament is conscious of containing all this in germ 
and prophecy; the New Testament is conscious of 
having brought to the fulfillment all that lay in the 
bosom of the Old. The spirit of the Old Testament 
says that the glory of the latter house shall exceed 
the glory of the former. The spirit of the New 
Testament says: "For even that which was made 
glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of 
the glory that excelleth." The two Testaments are 
bound together in a vital unity, and the unity of 
both is a witness to each. 

3. The evidence of purpose is in Israel's history. 
The unity which is manifest in the Bible is further 
found to inhere in the very history of Israel. The 
history veils and yet reveals a purpose, the purpose 
of Israel's God. This idea of purpose dominates 

fittest. Theol., page 8. Quoted by Dr. Orr. 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 45 

the history, is the very soul of it, and invests it with 
that peculiar teleological character which makes it 
stand alone among the histories and religions of 
the world. This purpose is not something read into 
the history; it is something you cannot read out. 
You cannot get it out of the history. The evidence 
of it is the history itself. Paul calls it the mystery 
"hid from all ages and generations/' 1 to be revealed 
in Jesus Christ. Without this dominating idea of 
purpose the history itself falls into worthless scraps. 
It teases by its f ragmentariness ; it is without regard 
to what we would like to know about nations, indi- 
viduals, epochs, and events; it is not scientifically 
put together; it does not exist for its own sake. 
"Israel," says Dorner, "has the idea of teleology as 
a kind of soul." 2 

The facts speak for themselves, and this is said 
with full knowledge of the fact that the radical 
critics propose a reconstructed history. The Old 
Testament, however, does exist. This much is a 
fact and is so far to be considered as evidence. We 
are seeking to find what impression this Book makes 
on us and what claim it makes for itself. I believe 
we shall find that this impression is so firm and 
coherent and so consistent with the claim the Book 
makes for itself that it will remain unshaken by any 
reasonable sifting of documents or shifting of 

1 Colossians i. 26 and Ephesians iii. 3, 9. 
Corner, "System of Doctrine," Volume I., page 274. Quot- 
ed by Dr. Orr. 



46 Witnesses to the Word. 

dates. You can no more grind out of this history 
this divine purpose than you can separate the "water- 
mark" from a piece of writing paper. A rapid 
glance will make this plain. The story of creation 
is the opening chapter. It is not taken from the 
notebook of a scientist, but from a prophet's vision. 
It is enough to reveal "In the beginning God." 
We see a creation and not a heathen cosmogony, 
the one God and not a mythology. It is enough to 
show man, the crown of creation, made in his Mak- 
er's image. The account of man's fall is placed 
next, to mark the beginning of his sin. It is not 
speculative, but it is a practical spiritual explanation 
of the origin of evil. God's justice falls on man's 
sin, though at the very beginning "mercy rejoices 
against judgment." The river of iniquity sweeps 
on, getting broader and deeper until wickedness 
covers the world as waters cover the sea. The 
storm cloud of divine judgment breaks at last in the 
flood. Here, again, the ark is the emblem of mercy, 
and the covenant with Noah makes a new beginning, 
with the promises of God fairer than the rainbow 
arching the sky of faith. From a world again fast 
filling with heathen darkness God calls Abraham, 
"that he might seek a godly seed," through him and 
his seed to bless all the nations of the world. Then 
of Abraham's seed the line of Isaac is chosen. Then 
Jacob is taken and Esau left, not by accident, but 
by design, with a view to a future, in accordance 
with a purpose not fully revealed, but, neverthe- 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 47 

less, present. Then Jud'ah is designed as the royal 
tribe. 

Notice, in the next place, how the ages unfold 
into one another. The patriarchal age passes by 
with its promises, covenants, and peculiar provi- 
dences. The path may wind and cross and almost 
lose itself; but the purpose shines clear, the promise 
cannot be broken, and so this age unfolds itself into 
the next. Then comes the Mosaic age, with a mar- 
velous fulfilling of the promises made to the fathers. 
God is known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob. Israel is becoming a nation with a history 
and with a future. We need note only the birth of 
Moses, his call, the exodus, the covenants and com- 
mandments of Sinai, and the providential preserva- 
tion of the people; the conquest under Joshua, the 
restoration under Samuel, and the founding of the 
kingdom. Each event is instinct with the purpose. 
However dark the history becomes, the vision is 
never lost. Israel has a consciousness of election — 
election to a destiny and sphere of service in the 
world that was to fill all the history of a golden age 
yet to come. This consciousness is indissolubly 
linked into the past. Moses and the exodus are 
ground into the very soul of the nation. Jehovah 
with his covenants, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob, is their God. "There is thus displayed 
throughout the whole of these Old Testament Scrip- 
tures a historical continuity, a firmness and coher- 
ence of texture, a steadily evolving and victorious 



48 Witnesses to the Word. 

self-fulfilling purpose, which has nowhere, even in 
the remotest degree, its parallel in the history of 
religions." 1 

4. Let us note Israel's idea of God. The very 
heart of Israel's religion was its idea of God. This 
idea was her peculiar treasure which no other nation 
possessed. 2 They were conscious that they were the 
special recipients and custodians of this revelation. 
Every age and every epoch of her history have this 
religious horizon and this theological background. 
The Old Testament knows no time when Israel was 
not conscious of possessing this knowledge which 
had been revealed to her as a special mark of God's 
favor. Monotheism is the very stuff and substance 
of Israel's religious consciousness. The radical crit- 
ic — who assumes that all religions grow from lower 
forms of animism, totemism, stone and serpent 
worship, etc., toward and to monotheism — has as- 
sumed the existence of a general law which is far 
from being probable, not to say proved. The truth 
is, with all its religions and with all its history, the 
world has never had a pure monotheism — that is, 
a religion built on the unity and spirituality of God 
—except such as have grown on the parent stock of 
Israel. When this same critic, having assumed the 
law, further states that Israel is no exception to this 
general law, he has added a second offense to his 



1 Orr, "Problem of the Old Testament," page 38. 
"Deuteronomy iv. 32-35. 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 49 

first violent hypothesis. To say that the prophets 
are the inventors of ethical monotheism, that they 
put it into the religion of Israel, and that prophetic 
"editors" wrote it into the history of Israel, is not 
only to do violence to the plain sense of the history, 
but it is to miss the meaning of the whole prophetic 
movement. It is apparent that they do> not speak as 
innovators. They chide the people and charge them 
with falling below their known duty and with vio- 
lating the sacred covenants of the God of their fa- 
thers and with basely returning his grace and good- 
ness with disobedience and rebellion. Their rebukes 
come with a recollection and a remorse. 1 Their 
messages always had their roots in history, Israel's 
peculiar history, so full of Israel's God. Their 
outlook was to the future, over whose hills the 
dawn of Israel's hope would break; but out of the 
past, filled with the covenant mercy of Jehovah, they 
drew their motives to obedience. 

This God is consistently conceived of as a God 
who makes promises and binds himself most sol- 
emnly to keep them. He is a God who relates him- 
self to his people by covenants and undertakes to 
hold these covenants sacred through all ages — that 
is, he is a God who lives in the realm of character. 
Character is the very core of Israel's conception of 
God. He is the Lord, the Lord God, gracious and 
full of tender mercies, long-suffering, and kind. 

1 G. A. Smith, ''Book of the Twelve," Volume I., page 98. 
4 



50 Witnesses to the Word. 

And by these covenants the history of redemption 
moves on, darkened by man's sin, but illumined by 
the light of redeeming love. This "is the golden 
thread running through history, psalm, prophecy, 
gospel, epistle, and binding all together/' 1 Israel in 
her highest moods always feels that her glory is 
her God, and Paul voices this historic consciousness 
of the race when he boasts that to her were commit- 
ted the oracles of God. 

There is another element in Israel's God that 
marks her religious conceptions as unique and 
makes us feel that these are ideas and ideals of God 
and not ideas and ideals of men about God. God 
requires character in his worshipers. "He will by 
no means clear the guilty." Pagan religions have 
always divorced religion from morality. "Walk 
thou before me, and be thou perfect" is one of the 
earliest revelations of the Bible, and all through 
history the end of redemption is to make men holy. 
God's judgments on sin in the Old Testament may 
seem terrific, but they must have been deserved, and 
they serve to stamp the consciousness of the race 
with a sense of God's anger at sin. While paganism 
sets the priest to teach religion and the philosopher 
to teach morality as in ancient Rome, it is the pecul- 
iar achievement of the religion of the Bible that it 
has welded into one religion and morality and has 
given to the world the character type of piety. The 

a Orr's "Problem of the Old Testament," page 42. 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 51 

most perfect statement of what this character reli- 
gion of the Bible involves is found in Micah's clas- 
sic passage: 1 "He hath showed thee, O man, what 
is good ; and what doth Jehovah require of thee, but 
to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God?" Such a religion, we may be sure, 
never emanated "from man's own devising. It is 
too high for him. He could not have translated it 
into fact and history as is done in the Scriptures." 2 

5. The Bible claims to be inspired. Clear and 
characteristic throughout is the Bible's claim to be 
the inspired Word of God. This claim meets us ev- 
erywhere in both Testaments and is nothing short of 
a national consciousness. This is a fact, and a fact, 
we claim, peculiar to Israel's history. Other nations 
have had, it is true, their mythologies, legends, 
myths, appearances of the gods, etc. ; but in none of 
them do we find such history-making revelations 
and such revelation-yielding history. The Bible 
certainly claims to be a revelation of God which is 
essentially true and divine — a revelation which has 
been afforded no other people and which constitutes 
their peculiar trust and treasure, a treasure held in 
trust for all the race and until Jehovah shall set up 
his universal kingdom of righteousness, truth, jus- 
tice, and love. This consciousness is never lost sight 
of and meets us from page to page, epoch to epoch, 



^icah vi. 8. 

2 Orr, "Problem of the Old Testament," page 44. 



52 Witnesses to the Word. 

book to book, testament to testament, with an im- 
pressive consistency. God's acts reveal as well as 
his words. "He made known his ways unto Moses, 
his acts unto the children of Israel." 1 "So are my 
ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than 
your thoughts." 2 The peculiar quality, precious and 
indispensable, is that it is a historical revelation. 
Acts reveal more deeply, more inexhaustibly, more 
unchangeably, and yet more freshly than words. 
The tendency to resolve Bible history into myth and 
legend, coupled with the claim that its revelation 
quality would be untouched by such a process, was 
offered to the Church and rejected in the allegoriz- 
ing movement of the early Church and in the Gnos- 
tic theories of the second century. It needs to be 
just as resolutely discerned and discredited now as 
then. We rest our claim to the inspiration of the 
Bible just where the Bible rests its own claim, on 
the peculiar character of Israel's history 3 and on the 
peculiar quality of Israel's revelation. 4 When we 
read the record, see its unity, trace its purpose, feel 
its lofty ideas of God and of duty, compare its eth- 
ical monotheism with the other religions of the 
world, and then ask for an explanation of these 
facts, the answer lies at hand on the very face of the 
revelation. Lawgiver, psalmist, prophet, evangel- 
ist, epistolarian, and revelator, all unite in saying: 



a Psalm ciii. 7. 2 Isaiah lv. 8, 9. 3 Deuteronomy iv. 32-35. 
4 Deuteronomy iv. 6, 7. 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 53 

"Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, 
but the spirit which is of God; that we might know 
the things that are freely given to us of God. Which 
things also we speak, not in the words which man's 
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teach- 
eth." 

"The Bible contains in itself the fullest witness to 
its divine authority. If it appears that a large col- 
lection of fragmentary records, written, with few 
exceptions, without any designed connection, at most 
distant times and under the most varied circum- 
stances, yet combine to form a definite whole, broad- 
ly separated from other books ; . . . if in propor- 
tion as they are felt to be separate they are felt also 
to be instinct with a common spirit, then it will be 
readily acknowledged that, however they were unit- 
ed afterwards into the sacred volume, they are yet 
legibly stamped with the divine seal 'as inspired of 
God' in a sense in which no other writings are." 1 

Let us suppose that it has been decided to build 
at Washington a massive and magnificent building, 
a national monument, a memorial to the spirit of 
America. It has been arranged that the workmen 
and the quarries of every State are to furnish some 
portion of the material, that each piece is to be built 
according to specification and fully and finally pre- 
pared at the quarry for its place in the building. 



a Bishop Westcott, "The Bible in the Church," page 14. 
Quoted by Dr. Orr in 'The Problem of the Old Testament." 



54 Witnesses to the Word. 

Vermont is to send white marble; Tennessee, pink 
marble; Georgia, her cloudy Creole; Massachusetts, 
granite ; Connecticut, brown stone ; Ohio, gray sand- 
stone; Michigan, red stone; and limestone from St. 
Louis. The stones are to be hewn into every shape 
known to the builders' art — some large, some small, 
some for the outer walls, some for interior decora- 
tion, and some for exterior pinnacle or tower. Like 
the temple at Jerusalem, not a stone is to be 
touched by mallet or chisel after it is laid down 
in Washington. Finally the stones are all laid 
down and classified according to the specifications. 
The building rises month by month ; no stone misses 
its mate; no block lacks its fellow; each piece fits 
its place; there are just enough and not one too 
many. Finally the finished building stands, the 
wonder of the age. The walls are shapely and 
strong ; the arches are true ; each pinnacle has a per- 
fect place in the picture; the builder's art is satis- 
fied; the artist's eye is pleased. Such an achieve- 
ment demands an explanation. Only one explana- 
tion can satisfy the facts. Back of the quarrymen, 
back of the foreman, back of the master builder 
must have been the master architect, who planned it 
all and gave to each workman the specifications for 
his work. 

The Bible is such a temple of eternal truth. Its 
stones were quarried out of the lives of men far re- 
mote from one another and at periods covering at 
least a millennium of years. Every phase of human 



The Witness of the Word to Itself. 55 

experience has furnished some portion of the ma- 
terial. Every color of human emotion has been 
worked into the scheme; great blocks like Moses 
and Paul, small stones like Nahum and Habak- 
kuk, stones as big as an age and pieces as small as 
the story of Ruth, stones as shapely as Isaiah and 
as rugged as Amos; yet every stone finds its place, 
fits its fellow, and suits the purpose of the Book. 
When the Book is finished, the temple is complete, 
God's temple of truth in man, 1 The conclusion is 
inevitable, the Builder is one and the Builder is God. 
Such an impression the Bible, when allowed to speak 
for itself, makes on an open mind and an honest 
heart. To a satisfied reason faith adds the choice 
of the heart; and "the acknowledgment of God in 
Christ, accepted by thy reason, solves for thee all 
questions in the earth and out of it." 2 

1 See Dr. Torry's illustration in a small volume called "The 
Bible and Its Christ." 

2 Browning, "Death in the Desert." 



CHAPTER III. 

The Witness of Prophecy; or, The Bible and 

Its Christ. 

THE whole Bible bears witness to Christ. The 
fact of redemption and the features of the 
Redeemer can be seen in the Old Testament no less 
than in the New by any one who follows the method 
of Jesus 1 and takes the "bird's-eye view" of revela- 
tion. From such an outlook seeing becomes believ- 
ing, and such a conviction is not shaken by every 
wind of doctrine nor by every kaleidoscopic hypoth- 
esis of radical criticism. This consistent testimony 
of the Book taken as a whole gives coherency to the 
revelation and lifts it out of the class of merely hu- 
man effects and furnishes the most inspiring and sat- 
isfactory evidence of the divinity of our Lord. The 
entire Old Testament is prophetic of the New. 
Fundamentally imbedded in it is this consciousness 
of being an incomplete, imperfect, and provisional 
order, a prophetic preparation for the future king- 
dom and the coming King. But this present dis- 
cussion is concerned more with prophecy as such 
and prophecies individually considered. 

The seer was succeeded by the prophet. The di- 
vining cup, the village oracle, the emotional mad- 
ness, the ephod, the Urim and Thummim are not 

a Luke xxiv. 27. 

(56) 



The Witness of Prophecy. 57 

the implements of this order at its golden age nor 
the proper characteristics of prophecy as such. 
They served their purpose, which was local and 
temporary. To find that which was permanent, tel- 
eological, and peculiar to Israel's prophecy we must 
turn to the writing prophets — those preachers, 
statesmen, reformers, religious leaders, and heralds 
of the kingdom. So considered, prophecy will be 
seen to be the wonder of the ages, an inherent and 
consistent part of revelation itself. Pascal has said 
that the witness of prophecy to Christ constitutes 
the supreme evidence of the Christian religion. 
Prophecy as we find it in the Bible is a fact. It is 
entitled to be studied as such and to be allowed to 
make its own impression. 

It is peculiar to the religion of Israel. Such 
divination and vaticination, such oracles and sooth- 
sayers, necromancers, astrologers, etc., as we find 
in heathen religions differ from Hebrew prophecy 
vastly more than they resemble it. Their oracles 
were rooted in love of the marvelous. They repre- 
sented an attempt to pry into the future in answer 
to an idle curiosity or to meet an urgent necessity 
for personal or public guidance; they spoke when 
consulted; they were paid as other professionals in 
society were paid, and their ambiguity was notori- 
ous ; they were individual and capricious ; they were 
the subjects of no historical development ; they were 
not rooted in morality; they were involved in no 
vital purpose and did not unite to form a coherent 



58 Witnesses to the Word. 

hope, or national consciousness. This is precisely 
what Hebrew prophecy does. It is inseparably in- 
volved in the prospects of the kingdom of God. It 
clings as closely to the main issue as do the history, 
ritual, poetry, and legislation of the Bible. It has 
its roots in a moral purpose, the religious discipline 
of the race and the spiritual culture of the Church. 
Its outlook is toward that divine society on earth 
which becomes more and more clearly known as the 
kingdom of God. It is an inherent and essential 
part of such a revelation as the Bible affords. Like 
the revelation itself, the prophecies form one great 
and harmonious system. They are the betrothal 
promises of the divine Bridegroom to the Church, 
his future bride. 

The necessity of prophecy arises from the very 
nature of the revelation. The revelation of redemp- 
tion must be a revelation through history. "He 
made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the 
children of Israel." Such a revelation must, there- 
fore, exhibit the same unity and continuity which 
belong to that eternal purpose of God which he pur- 
posed in Christ Jesus from the foundation of the 
world. For history to be the vehicle for such a 
revelation, it too must be seen to have unity and 
continuity, and so must be seen with the eagle eye 
of prophecy. Prophecy is God's perspective on his- 
tory. History must be seen from above and in re- 
lation to its central event, the cross of Christ. The 
true proportions of the cross can never be under- 



The Witness of Prophecy. 59 

stood without adequate background and horizon. 
This history alone can furnish, and to furnish this 
is the true philosophy of history. It takes all of 
history to give the scale for such an event ; and only 
prophecy, with its insight and foresight, its intui- 
tions and visions, compacting and compressing the 
ages into its consciousness, can thus shape history 
into a vehicle for this revelation. Prophecy is no 
more an idle marvel than miracles are. They are 
both supernatural indeed, but they are both insep- 
arably involved in the revelation. They transcend 
reason when seen simply in the light of the natural 
order ; but they both answer the highest demands O'f 
reason when placed in the light of this higher order 
of the supernatural, the necessity of redeeming love 
to reveal itself. 

The prophet was the interpreter of God's will to 
men, 1 the mouth of Jehovah, the preacher of right- 
eousness, 2 the herald of the kingdom. He was an 
expert student of Israel's history, religion, and life. 
He read the past with insight; he scanned the fu- 
ture with foresight. He found the will of God re- 
vealed in both and enforced the divine will on men 
with motives drawn from each. He took his text 
from the law and the history, and in the history of 
the law he read the law of the history. Whether 
this was the written law of a completed Pentateuch 



1 Piepenbring, "Theology of the Old Testament," page 85. 
2 Kirkpatrick, "Doctrine of the Prophets," page 14. 



6o Witnesses to the Word. 

or the "common law" of the national conscience is 
immaterial to this discussion. To show the guilt 
of sin he pointed to the past and charged the people 
with gross and ungrateful violation of their cove- 
nant obligation. To show the folly and conse- 
quences of sin he pointed to the punishments which 
the Holy One of Israel in the demands of righteous- 
ness must inevitably visit on his own chosen people. 1 
But he always sees the "remnant" in the wreck. 
The dawn will come to those "who watch for the 
morning." The prophetic tradition never wavers 
that history will not break till it break in praises at 
his feet. 

The prophet feels that he is laid hold o>f by the 
Spirit of God in a peculiar way. He is conscious 
that the product of this elevated mood in speech and 
vision is not his own thought or words, but God's 
word. He feels the word with clearness and cer- 
tainty. Behind the inspired "will be" lies the eter- 
nal "must be." The word lies on him like a word 
which he burns to deliver. 2 The expression "the 
burden," "burden of the Lord," "burden of the word 
of the Lord," or some similar expression, is found 
in nearly every one of the prophets. 3 The expres- 
sion "the word of the Lord came" occurs in Isaiah 
five times, in Jeremiah twenty-nine times, in Eze- 



1 Amos iii. 2. 2 Amos iii. 3-8. 

3 Isaiah xiii. I, xv. 1, xvii. 1, xix. 1, xxi. 1, xxiii. 1, etc. ; 
Jeremiah xxiii. 33, 36, 38, etc. ; Nahum i. 1 ; Zechariah ix. 1 ; 
Malachi i. 1. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 61 

kiel forty-five times, in Amos twice, in Jonah once, 
in Haggai three times, and in Zechariah eight times. 

Back of the message is the man. The heart of the 
man is what Kuenen calls his "surpassing piety and 
moral earnestness." The character of the prophet 
must attest the message; and the message must fit 
the present need, be consistent with previous revela- 
tion, and the predictions must stand the test of fu- 
ture fulfillment. 

Prediction is as much a part of prophecy as mir- 
acles are of the gospel history. With the predictive 
element torn out, the fragmentary remains of such 
a mutilated mass would absolutely refuse to combine 
into anything intelligible, much less impressive. As 
they are, they form an edifice of thought and faith 
grand, imposing, and spacious, with Jesus Christ 
the "Head of the corner." 

Prophecy concerns itself mainly with three great 
lines of thought: the oracles against the heathen 
nations, the prophecies concerning the Jews as a 
people or nation, and the Messianic prophecies. We 
will consider these in order. 

I. THE ORACLES AGAINST THE HEATHEN NATIONS. 

i. Of Nineveh, Nahum 1 says : "What do ye imag- 
ine against the Lord ? he will make an utter end : 
affliction shall not rise up the second time." To this 
Zephaniah 2 adds : "He . . . will make Nineveh a 

a Nahum i. 9. 2 Zephaniah ii. 13, 15. 



62 Witnesses to the Word. 

desolation, and dry like a wilderness. . . . This is 
the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in 
her heart, I am, and there is none beside me : how is 
she become a desolation !" It is hardly necessary to 
remind the reader that this prophecy was delivered in 
the noonday of one of the world's proudest empires 
and that it was so thoroughly fulfilled that the very 
site of the city was lost. The great discoverer Lay- 
ard says : "It is indeed one of the most remarkable 
facts in history that the records of an empire so re- 
nowned for its power and civilization should have 
been literally lost and that the site of a city as emi- 
nent for its extent as for its splendor should for 
ages have been a matter of doubt/' 1 

2. Of the Moabites and the Ammonites, Zephani- 
ah 2 speaks: "I have heard the reproach of Moab. 
. . . Therefore as I live, saith the Lord of hosts, 
the God of Israel, Surely Moab shall be as Sodom, 
and the children of Ammon as Gomorrah, even the 
breeding o£ nettles, and saltpits, and a perpetual 
desolation." To this Jeremiah 3 adds: "Moab shall 
be destroyed from being a people." The doom of 
Philistia is told by Zephaniah: 4 "Gaza shall be for- 
saken, and Ashkelon a desolation: they shall drive 
out Ashdod at the noonday, and Ekron shall be 
rooted up." The student of history knows how 
thoroughly these predictions came to pass. 



bayard's "Discoveries at Nineveh," page vii. 

2 Zephaniah ii. 8, g. s Jeremiah xlviii. 42. 4 Zephaniah ii. 4. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 63 

3. Most striking of all these Palestinian oracles 
is Jeremiah's picture of the seemingly inaccessible 
and impregnable palaces and citadels of Edom. He 
says : x "Thy terribleness hath deceived thee, and the 
pride of thine heart, O thou that dwellest in the 
clefts of the rock, that holdest the height of the hill. 
. . . Also Edom shall be a desolation. ... As 
in the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, . . . 
no man shall abide there, neither shall a son of man 
dwell in it." It is not strange that these passages 
were a puzzle to those commentators who lived be- 
fore the discovery of the rock-hewn palaces in the 
cliffs of Petra. When at last these places were 
brought again to the light of history, it was as if the 
dead world had risen from its grave to bear witness 
to the truth of God's word. 

4. Ezekiel 2 spoke concerning the mighty and an- 
cient land of Egypt: "It shall be the basest of the 
kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more 
above the nations: for I will diminish them, that 
they shall no more rule over the nations." "And 
there be no more a prince of the land of Egypt." 
The whole history of Egypt for two thousand years 
seems but a commentary on this passage. 

5. Tyre is mentioned in Ezekiel. 3 It is there fore- 
told: "And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, 
and break down her towers: I will also scrape her 



1 Jeremiah xlix. 16-18. 2 Ezekiel xxix. 15. 
3 Ezeklel xxvi. 15-21. 



64 Witnesses to the Word. 

dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. 
It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the 
midst of the sea." "They shall lay thy stones and 
thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water." 1 
This was said of old Tyre; and it is said that Alex- 
ander built a passage to the new Tyre by scraping 
the ruins from the site of the old and laying her 
stones, timber, and dust in the midst of the water. 
The infidel Volney has described it as a place where 
the fishermen spread their nets. 2 

6. "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms," was yet in 
her pomp and pride when Isaiah 3 said: "It shall 
never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from 
generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian 
pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make 
their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall 
lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful 
creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs 
shall dance there." This is one of the peculiar cases 
where the prophecy seems like a description. The 
fate of Babylon could not have been told by the 
historian more exactly than it was foretold by the 
prophet. These prophecies against the nations were 
fulfilled. It is beside the mark to say that a frag- 
ment here and a detail there of individual prophecies 
were not fulfilled. Here are plain cases seen in large 



1 Ezekiel xxvi. 12. 

2 Hopkins's "Evidences of Christianity," page 309. 

3 Isaiah xiii. 20, 21. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 65 

outline, broadly based and incontestable. The prob- 
lem is to account for them. This can be done only 
on the basis of the reality of prediction in Hebrew 
prophecy. 

II. THE ORACLES CONCERNING THE JEWISH NATION. 

The Jews themselves, both as a people and as a 
nation, were almost constantly the subject of predic- 
tive prophecy. Very fearfully has the author of 
Deuteronomy foretold the doom that would over- 
take a finally impenitent and unfaithful people. 
Mark how the "blessings" and the "curses" march 
in solemn processional before the people in one of 
the sublimest chapters in the Bible. 1 Note how the 
fate of the Jew for the last nineteen centuries was 
foretold in Deuteronomy xxviii. 64-66: "The Lord 
shall scatter thee among all people. . . . And 
among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither 
shall the sole of thy foot have rest: but the Lord 
shall give thee there a trembling heart, 2 and failing 
of eyes, and sorrow of mind : and thy life shall hang 
in doubt before thee." He follows the cross around 
the world, that he may incur the curse he himself 
invoked : "His blood be upon us and our children." 
He is a timid citizen in all countries ("a trembling 
heart"), and in some lands to this clay his life hangs 
in doubt before him. His permanence as a people 

1 Deuteronomy xxviii. 1-68. 2 Compare Leviticus xxvi. 36. 

5 



66 Witnesses to the Word. 

but serves to perpetuate the prophecy until the ap- 
pointed time. The same prophetic utterance almost 
describes the doomster while predicting doom. 
"The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from 
far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle 
flieth" — from over the seas the Roman came, as 
swift and terrible as his own emblematic eagle — "a 
nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand" — 
no kindred Oriental speech — "a nation of fierce 
countenance" — how fierce of face and speech the 
Latin armies must have seemed to the beleaguered 
Jews as they filled the hillsides with crucified vic- 
tims until room was wanting for the crosses and 
crosses for the bodies! 1 — "which shall not regard 
the person of the old, nor show favor to the young." 
In these Roman wars the aged and the young unfit 
for slavery were slain. Again the prophecy reads: 
"And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy 
high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou 
trustedst, throughout all thy land." : Josephus tells 
how the Roman with his immense battering-ram 
beat through the walls of Jerusalem and overtopped 
them with his attacking towers. This siege and sack 
of Jerusalem by Titus is one of the bloodiest events 
in human history. Read what Josephus says 3 about 
the horrors of that siege, the famine, the slaughter, 

1 Josephus, "Wars of the Jews," Book V., Chapter XI. 
2 Deuteronomy xxviii. 52. 

s Josephus, "Wars of the Jews," Book VI., Chapter III., 
Section 4. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 67 

and the final havoc, as well-nigh a whole nation was 
put to the sword, sent to the "games," or sold into 
slavery. In the light of that event read Deuteron- 
omy xxviii. 54-57: "The tender and delicate woman 
among you, which would not adventure to set the 
sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness 
and tenderness, . . . shall eat her children, and 
will not give to any of them of the flesh of her 
children, for want of all things ... in the siege 
and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress 
thee in thy gates." Again, the prophecy reads : 
"The Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with 
ships: . . . and there ye shall be sold unto your 
enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man 
shall buy you." 1 Again, Josephus tells us that many 
thousands of Jews over seventeen years of age were 
brought to Egypt in ships to be sold as slaves 2 for 
the Egyptian mines. Here the sudden supply glut- 
ted the market. A Jew was bartered for a pair of 
slippers. At last no one would buy, and three thou- 
sand were left to starve to death. 3 

It was predicted that in this "land of beauty" "its 
cities shall be desolate," and "the stranger that shall 
come from a far land" and "all nations shall say, 
Wherefore hath the Lord done thus unto this 
land?" 4 The feet of the pilgrim and the traveler 

1 Deuteronomy xxviii. 68. 

2 "\Vars of the Jews," Book VI., Chapter IX., Section 2. 
3 Bettex, "The Bible the Word of God," page no. 
4 Deuteronomy xxix. 22-24. 



68 Witnesses to the Word. 

through nearly two thousand years have been ful- 
filling this prophecy. 

Other prophecies have more precisely named 
events, dates, and actors. Isaiah predicts the over- 
throw of Sennacherib's army and the consequent 
escape of Jerusalem. 1 Wellhausen calls the deliver- 
ance "a still unexplained catastrophe," but he does 
not dispute either the oracle or the issue. 2 Amos 
predicts the downfall and captivity of the Northern 
Kingdom. In the words of Wellhausen, he "proph- 
esied as close at hand the downfall of the kingdom, 
which just at that moment was rejoicing in the con- 
sciousness of power, and the deportation of the peo- 
ple to a far-off land." 3 Of such a kingdom at such 
a time Amos predicted: "Therefore will I cause 
you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, saith 
Jehovah, whose name is the God of hosts." 4 In this 
epoch of illustrious splendor and in a time of peace 
and proud security Amos predicts the Assyrian cam- 
paign, till then unheard of. 

More than a century before the captivity of Judah 
Micah said: "Therefore shall Zion for your sake 
be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become 
heaps. . . . Be in pain, and labor to bring forth, 
O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for 
now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou 



1 Isaiah xxxvii. 26-36. 

2 "History of Israel," page 483. Quoted by Dr. Orr. 
3 "History of Israel," page 470. Quoted by Dr. Orr. 
4 Amos v. 27. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 69 

shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to 
Babylon." But this is not the end; for "there shalt 
thou be delivered; there Jehovah shall redeem thee 
from the hand of thine enemies." 1 Jeremiah in the 
last years of the kingdom of Judah predicted that 
the captivity now grown imminent should last for 
seventy years. "These nations shall serve the king 
of Babylon seventy years. And it shall come to 
pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I 
will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, 
saith Jehovah, for their iniquity, and the land of the 
Chaldeans, and will make it desolate forever." 2 
This prophecy seems to have been not only substan- 
tially fulfilled, but exactly to the very year, counting 
from the first deportation under Jehoiakim, in 606 
B.C. 3 

Isaiah xl. to lxvi. may have been written, as some 
think, in the exile, with Cyrus already "above the 
horizon" ; but it was at least written before the res- 
toration or even before Cyrus had taken Babylon 4 
and is so far predictive when it says of Cyrus : "He 
is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: 
even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built ; and 
to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. 5 Thus 
saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right 

x Micah iii. 12, iv. 10. 2 Jeremiah xxv. 11, 12. 
8 Compare 2 Kings xxiv. 1 ; 2 Chronicles xxxvi. 6ff; Daniel 
i. iff. 

4 Kirkpatrick, "Doctrine of the Prophets," page 357. 
5 Isaiah xliv. 28, xlv. 1-4. 



yo Witnesses to the Word. 

hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; 
and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before 
him the two-leaved gates ; and the gates shall not be 
shut." As intimated here, the city fell by strategy; 
and Cyrus's general, Gobryas, caused the king's son, 
Bel-shar-uzur (Belshazzar) to be put to death. 1 

The book of Daniel, keenly assailed as it has been, 
still presents its grand visions of "the four empires" 
which were to precede the coming of that kingdom 
which was to be like the stone cut out of the moun- 
tain without hands. However some critics may 
strain to make the "seventy weeks" of Daniel end 
in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, it is only by 
forced and unnatural shifts that this is attempted. 
Reckoning from the decree of Artaxerxes and the 
mission of Ezra (450 B.C.), the sixty-nine weeks 
that were to elapse till the Anointed One (Messiah), 
the Prince, will run out near enough to the time of 
Christ's public ministry to startle any mind that is 
open to evidence of the reality of prediction. 2 

Even in the New Testament this people are stili 
the subject of prophecy. 3 The fall of Jerusalem 
is foretold by the Saviour. 4 The apostle Paul in- 
cludes Israel in the ultimate purpose of redemp- 
tion. 5 



1 Hastings's "Bible Dictionary"; article, "Babylonia.' 

2 Daniel ix. 25. 

3 "Problem of the Old Testament," page 458. 

4 Matthew xxiv. 2-32. 5 Romans xi. 23-32. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 71 

III. PROPHECIES CONCERNING THE MESSIAH. 

The Messianic hope is indelibly impressed on the 
Old Testament. The existence of the Messianic 
prophecies cannot be denied even by those who dis- 
pute the fulfillment in Jesus Christ and his gospel. 
The ancient Jewish writers ascribed four hundred 
and fifty-six passages in the Old Testament to the 
Messiah or to his times. They are distributed as 
follows: Seventy-five from the Pentateuch, two 
hundred and forty-three from the prophets, and one 
hundred and thirty-eight from the Hagiographa. 
These references are supported by five hundred and 
fifty-eight separate quotations from the rabbinic 
writings. 1 No one will undertake to defend these 
rabbinic readings, but they serve to show how 
continuously the Messianic light played in Israel's 
sky. 

A most interesting fact goes to show how deep 
the "hope of Israel" lay on the national conscious- 
ness. The New Testament writings look on the Old 
Testament as being full of the Messianic expecta- 
tion and freely quote it to show how it has been 
fulfilled in Jesus and the gospel. Each of the four 
Gospels and the books of Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthi- 
ans, Ephesians, Hebrews, and 1 Peter contain pas- 
sages referred to as Messianic prophecies fulfilled 
in Christ. These New Testament quotations of 
Messianic prophecies fulfilled in Christ number in 

1 Edersheim's "Life of Christ," Volume II., page 710. 



72 Witnesses to the Word. 

all seventy-four. 1 They are taken from the books 
of the Old Testament as follows: Genesis, seven; 
Deuteronomy, two; Psalms, twenty-eight; Isaiah, 
twenty-one; Jeremiah, one; Hosea, two; Joel, one; 
Amos, two; Micah, one; Habakkuk, one; Haggai, 
one; Zechariah, four; and Malachi, three. These 
seventy-four passages cover the whole range of rev- 
elation and stamp the entire Old Testament with a 
Messianic import. Jesus himself said : "These [the 
Old Testament Scriptures] are they which testify of 
me." 

The dawn of the Messianic hope began to glow 
before the "Sun of righteousness' ' had fully arisen 
in the prophetic sky. The first announcement of the 
hope was made when the shadow of sin first fell 
across the pathway of the race. This has long been 
called the protevangelium : 2 "I will put enmity be- 
tween thee and the woman, and between thy seed 
and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt 
bruise his heel." And so "God sent forth his Son, 
made of a woman/' 3 

The seed of the woman is next shown to be Abra- 
ham's seed. In Genesis xxii. 18 the prophecy moves 
forward a step: "And in thy seed shall all the na- 
tions of the earth be blessed." Referring to this, 
Paul says: "Now to Abraham and his seed were 
the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as 



1 Nave's "Topical Bible," page ioio. 2 Genesis iii. 15. 
3 Galatians iv. 4 



The Witness of Prophecy. 73 

of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is 
Christ." 1 "He took not on him the nature of an- 
gels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham."' 
Before we leave Genesis, another step is taken: "In 
Isaac shall thy seed be called." 3 

Next, Jacob is "loved" and Esau "hated" 4 To 
Jacob's line the blessing passes. "In thee and in thy 
seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." 1 
In Genesis still Messiah's line is fixed in Judah, 
singled out of all Jacob's sons : "The scepter shall 
not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from be- 
tween his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him 
shall the gathering of the people be." 6 "For it is 
evident," says the author of Hebrews, "that our 
Lord sprang out of Judah." 7 Judah was the royal 
tribe, but David's was the royal house that held the 
Messianic hope. "And in that day there shall be a 
root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of 
the people ; to it shall the Gentiles seek : and his rest 
shall be glorious." 8 "Behold, the days come, saith 
the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous 
Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and 
shall execute judgment and justice. . . . And 
this is his name whereby he shall be called, the Lord 
our Righteousness." 9 So Paul declares: "He was 
made of the seed of David according to the flesh." 10 

1 Galatians iii. 16. 2 Hebrews ii. 16. 3 Genesis xxi. 12. 4 Mal- 
achi i. 2; Romans ix. 13. 5 Genesis xxviii. 13-15. °Genesis xlix. 
10. 'Hebrews vii. 14. 8 Isaiah xi. 10. 9 Jeremiah xxiii. 5, 6. 
10 Romans i. 3. 



74 Witnesses to the Word. 

The place of his birth is designated. Micah fixes 
the place of the Messiah's birth: "But thou, Beth- 
lehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the 
thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come 
forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose 
goings forth have been from of old, from everlast- 
ing." 1 To which Matthew adds: "When Jesus was 
born in Bethlehem of Judea." 2 

The time of his birth, the time of Messiah's 
coming, was to be before the scepter departed from 
Judah and while the second temple was still stand- 
ing. Concerning the second temple Haggai 8 had 
said: "The desire of all nations shall come. . . . 
The glory of this latter house shall be greater than 
of the former." So confidently did the Jews believe 
that this temple could not be destroyed until the Mes- 
siah should come that they refused all terms from 
Titus and so involved themselves, city, and temple 
in complete destruction. Daniel also said : "Seventy 
weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy 
holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make 
an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniq- 
uity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and 
to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint 
the most Holy." 4 We have already seen that this 
time expired about the time our Lord began his 
public ministry — that is, was anointed at his bap- 



1 Micah v. 2. 2 Matthew ii. 1. 3 Haggai ii. 7, 9. 
"Daniel ix. 24. 



The Witness of Prophecy, 75 

tism and entered into his public office as 1 Messiah. 
This, of course, assumes that Daniel means by 
"week" a week of years and not of days. 1 It is 
certain that a general Messianic expectation about 
this time caused a number of false Christs to arise, 
and the expectation had penetrated even the classical 
peoples that an extraordinary Person was about to 
appear in Judea, 

Elias was first to come. Messiah was to be pre- 
ceded by a second Elijah. "Behold, I will send my 
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before 
me." 2 "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet 
before the coming of the great and dreadful day of 
the Lord." "The voice of him that crieth in the 
wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make 
straight in the desert a highway for our God." "In 
those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the 
wilderness O'f Judea, and saying, Repent ye, for the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand." 

His birth was to be from a virgin. "Behold, a 
virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call 
his name Immanuel." 3 

Isaiah foresees his miracles. "Then the eyes of 
the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf 
shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap 
as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing."* 

1 Numbers xiv. 34; Ezekiel iv. 6; Leviticus xxv. 8. 
2 Malachi iii. 1, iv. 5 ; Isaiah xl. 3 ; Matthew iii. 1, 2. 
a Isaiah vii. 14. So Matthew reads the hidden meaning of 
the prophet. 4 Isaiah xxxv. 5, 6. 



7 6 Witnesses to the Word. 

These very miracles Christ wrought time and time 
again. 

His public entry is thus described by Zechariah: 
"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O 
daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh 
unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, 
and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of 
an ass/' The twenty-first chapter of Matthew de- 
scribes the event as it took place. 

His rejection by his people is foretold. "And he 
shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stum- 
bling and for a rock of offense to both the houses 
of Israel." 1 "He hath no form nor comeliness; and 
when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we 
should desire him. . . . We hid as it were our 
faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed 
him not." ; In the words of John: "He came unto 
his own, and his own received him not."* 

He was to be scourged and mocked. "I gave my 
back to the . smiters, and my cheeks to them that 
plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame 
and spitting." 5 The scourging, the spitting, and the 
smiting are described in the twenty-sixth and twen- 
ty-seventh chapters of Matthew. 

His hands and feet were to be pierced. "The 
assembly of the wicked have inclosed me : they 
pierced my hands and my feet. ... I am 

1 Zechariah ix. 9. 2 Isaiah viii. 14. 3 Isaiah liii. 2, 3. 4 John i. 
11. 5 Isaiah 1. 6. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 77 

poured out like water, and all my bones are out of 
joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the 
midst of my bowels." 1 

He was to be numbered with transgressors. 
"And he was numbered with the transgressors ; and 
he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for 
the transgressors." 2 Between the two thieves the 
Jesus of the New Testament was crucified. 

He was to be mocked and reviled in his death. 
"All they that see me laugh me to scorn : they shoot 
out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted 
on the Lord that he would deliver him : let him de- 
liver him, seeing he delighted in him." 3 "Likewise 
also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes 
and elders, said, He saved others ; himself he cannot 
save. . . . He trusted in God; let him deliver 
him now, if he will have him : for he said, I am the 
Son of God." 4 

Gall and vinegar were to be given him. "They 
gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst 
they gave me vinegar to drink." 5 "They gave him 
vinegar to drink mingled with gall." 6 

His garments were to be parted. "They part my 
garments among them, and cast lots upon my ves- 
ture." 7 "Then the soldiers . . . took his gar- 
ments, . . . and said, Let us not rend it [the 



1 Psalm xxii. 14. 2 Isaiah liii. 12. 3 Psalm xxii. 7, 8. 4 Mat- 
thew xxvii. 41-43. 5 Psalm lxix. 21. 6 Matthew xxvii. 34. 
7 Psalm xxii. 18. 



y8 Witnesses to the Word. 

coat], but cast lots for it, whose it shall be : that the 
scripture might be fulfilled." 1 

His violent death is foretold. "For he was cut 
off out of the land of the living." 2 "And after 
threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off., 
but not for himself." 3 

Note his pierced side. "And I will pour upon 
the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of 
Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: 
and they shall look upon me whom they have 
pierced." 4 "One of the soldiers with a spear 
pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood 
and water." 5 

Note also his burial in a rich man's grave. "And 
he made his grave with the wicked, and with the 
rich in his death." 6 "There came a rich man of 
Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was 
Jesus's disciple: he went to Pilate, and begged the 
body of Jesus, . . . and laid it in his own new 
tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock." 7 

He was not to see corruption. "For thou wilt 
not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer 
thine Holy One to see corruption." 8 Of which 
Peter says: "Let me freely speak unto you of the 
patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, 
and his sepulcher is with us unto this day. There- 
fore being a prophet, and knowing that God hath 

'■"John xix. 23, 24. 2 Isaiah liii. 8. s Daniel ix. 26. 4 Zechariah 
xii. 10. 5 John xix. 34. ' 6 Isaiah liii. 9. 'Matthew xxvii. 57-60. 
8 Psalm xvi. 10. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 79 

sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his 
loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ 
to sit on his throne; he seeing this before spake of 
the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not 
left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption/' 1 

It is an interesting and profitable study to note 
how the Messianic Figure takes shape under the 
hands of successive prophets. There is a unity, pro- 
gressiveness, and consistency about this Messianic 
hope that puts the argument far above the mere 
question as to whether this or that particular proph- 
ecy is Messianic or not. The unity of this hope is 
not the unity of the monotone. It is that high order 
of unity that emerges out of diverse and apparently 
discordant notes, combines into an ascending har- 
mony, and so completely satisfies the higher reason. 

The Messiah was to have separate offices which 
find their synthesis in Jesus Christ. 

He was to be a Prophet like unto Moses, and the 
whole prophetic order was a type O'f him and a prep- 
aration for him. The very function of prophecy in 
Israel's religion finds its fulfillment in Christ. "I 
will raise them up a Prophet from among their 
brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in 
his mouth ; and he shall speak unto them all that I 
shall command him." 2 According to Peter, this 
was expressly fulfilled in Christ. 3 

He was to be a Priest like unto Melchizedek. 

*Acts ii. 29-31. 2 Deuteronomy xviii. 18. s Acts iii. 22, 



80 Witnesses to the Word. 

The whole priestly order was a type of him and a 
preparation for him. The priestly function in Is- 
rael's religion finds its fulfillment and the reason for 
its very existence in him. In him alone is the per- 
manent and absolute priesthood. "The Lord hath 
sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest for- 
ever after the order of Melchizedek." "Called of 
God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek." 
He was to be a King, "great David's greater 
Son," to sit upon his throne and order it forever. 
"Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of 
Zion." 2 The glory of his kingdom is described with 
marvelous spirituality in Isaiah ix. 6, 7 : "For unto 
us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the 
government shall be upon his shoulder: and his 
name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The 
mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of 
Peace. Of the increase of his government and of 
peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of 
David, and upon his kingdom, to establish it, and 
to uphold it, with judgment and with righteousness 
from henceforth even forever." To which Micah 
adds: "They shall beat their swords into plow- 
shares, and their spears into pruninghooks : nation 
shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither 
shall they learn war any more."' "They shall not 
hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain." 4 



1 Psalm ex. 4; Hebrews v. 10. 2 Psalm ii. 6. 
3 Micah iv. 3. 4 Isaiah xi. 9. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 81 

This kingdom was to include the Gentiles. "I 
will also give thee for a light to- the Gentiles, that 
thou may est be my salvation unto the end of the 
earth/' 1 "And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, 
and kings to the brightness of thy rising." 3 

If these prophecies do not unite in the Person of 
Jesus of Nazareth, it is perfectly useless to look 
anywhere in history for their fulfillment. It is hard 
to believe that Josephus could have been serious 
when he applied them to Titus. The whole New 
Testament revelation proceeds upon the base-line 
assumption that they are fulfilled perfectly, ideally, 
and universally in Christ. 

But Christ not merely unites separate prophecies 
in himself; he harmonizes elements that seemed 
hopelessly contradictory and incompatible. Israel's 
religion was built on the oneness of God. He was 
the Holy One of Israel. This was guarded as the 
core of their revelation. Yet Messiah, the repre- 
sentative of Jehovah, is himself the "mighty God." 
"In such passages'," says Orelli, "the Old Testament 
revelation falls into a self-contradiction, from which 
only a miracle has been able to deliver us, the incar- 
nation of the Son of God." 3 

Likewise we find in the various prophets and 
Psalms conceptions of the Messiah that seem incon- 
sistent with one another. The Messianic Figure is 

1 Isaiah xlix. 6. 2 Isaiah lx. 3-5. 

3 "01d Testament Prophecy," page 274. Quoted by Dr. 
Kirkpatrick. 

6 



82 Witnesses to the Word. 

at one time the commanding Prince of the fourfold 
Name, with his universal kingdom of truth, right- 
eousness, and peace. At another time a somber 
figure fills a picture of ineffable sadness. The suf- 
fering Servant of Isaiah liii. is diverse from the 
Messianic King. The Messiah of Daniel, 1 cut off 
soon after his anointing, is in sharp contrast to the 
vision of the Ruler coming forth from Bethlehem, 2 
standing in the majesty of Jehovah and great unto 
the ends of the earth. 

The "smitten Shepherd" of Zechariah 3 is seem- 
ingly incompatible with the Davidic "Branch," 
reigning wisely and executing judgment, whose 
name was the Lord our Righteousness. 4 The twen- 
ty-second Psalm appears far removed from the one 
hundred and tenth Psalm. Such divergent elements 
can come together only under a higher unity. This 
higher unity is presented in the Person of Jesus 
Christ. The character of Jesus presented in the 
New Testament combines these apparently incom- 
patible Messianic conceptions. They are combined, 
not in philosophy, but in a life — a life that has in it 
birth, suffering, service, death, and triumph over 
death. The conclusion is inevitable: either Jesus 
lived out a life that perfectly fulfilled, combined, 
and harmonized the Messianic prophecies, or he 
acted out in his life a Messianic role which he alone 

1 Daniel ix. 26. 2 Micah v. 2-4. 3 Zechariah xii. 10, xiii. 7. 
4 Jeremiah xxiii. 5, 6. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 83 

of all men had discovered in the puzzling prophecies 
of the Old Testament — a role that began in the 
mystery of his birth, involved the agony of the gar- 
den, the tragedy of the cross, and the farce of a 
pretended resurrection. Such a statement of the 
case, of course, carries its own answer. But neither 
is it possible to believe that the gospel answer to the 
Old Testament prophecy is the fictitious creation of 
the fishermen of Galilee. The Christ of the New 
Testament is just as much a fact of revelation as 
the Messiah of the Old. Each is a perfect answer 
to the other. This consistency is complete, binds all 
the books together in the highest kind of unity, and 
gives coherence to the whole. 

The fragmentary visions of the prophets became 
the perfect revelation of the Father through the 
Son. The long line of human priests came to com- 
pletion and passed away when the perfect Priest 
made his soul an offering for sin. Israel's kingship 
passed into her Messianic King. The suffering 
Servant poured out his soul unto death. The good 
Shepherd, smitten and rejected, gathered his scat- 
tering sheep into one fold. On the eve of his as- 
cension the risen Lord said: "All power is given 
unto me in heaven and in earth." "Go ye into all 
the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." 
And this gospel shall be preached among all na- 
tions for a witness unto them. Then cometh the 
end; and there shall be a new heaven and a new 
earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. 



84 Witnesses to the Word. 

This is the bird's-eye view of the scripture which 
Jesus used to open the eyes of the disciples on the 
way to Emmaus. The Bible, taken as a whole and 
allowed to make its own impression, will take care 
of its own claim to be the inspired Word of God. 
Prof. Robert Flint remarks upon the marvelous 
unity, self-consistency, and comprehensiveness of 
the Old Testament and points out that "it is at the 
same time a system which is not self-contained, but 
one of which all the parts contribute, each in its 
own place, to raise, sustain, and guide faith in the 
coming of a mysterious and mighty Saviour, a per- 
fect Prophet, perfect Priest, and perfect King, such 
as Christ alone of all men can be supposed to have 
been. . . - This broad, general fact, this vast and 
strange correlation of correspondence, cannot be in 
the least affected by questions of the 'higher criti- 
cism' as to the authority, time of origination, and 
mode of composition of the various books of the 
Old Testament." He says, further, that men may 
"altar their views as to the manner and method in 
which the ideal of the Messiah's person, work, and 
kingdom was, point by point, line by line, evolved 
and elaborated. There will not, however, be a sin- 
gle Messianic word or sentence, not a single line or 
feature the fewer in the Old Testament." 1 

The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. 
/Christ is the goal of prophecy, and the gqal of his- 

1 St. Giles Lecture. Quoted by Dr. Orr. 



The Witness of Prophecy. 85 

tory is his kingdom. The kingdom has come, but 
it is yet to come. The goal is still ahead. "These 
things were written for our learning, that we 
through patience and through comfort of the Scrip- 
tures might have hope." 1 "Then cometh the end, 
when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to 
God, even the Father, . . . that God may be all 
in all." 2 

1 Romans xv. 4. 2 i Corinthians xv. 24, 28. 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Witness of Jesus to the Bible — What Did 

He Say? 

(Luke xxiv. 44.) 

THE purpose of this chapter is to find what 
authority has been conferred on the Bible for 
Christians by Christ himself. It may seem to some 
a "vicious circle" to turn the Messianic searchlight 
on the cross and say, "Behold the Christ," then to 
claim inspiration for the Bible on the authority of 
"the great Teacher." It is a circle, but it is not on 
that account a vicious circle. It is a most profitable 
and a highly reasonable method of studying the 
case. For Christians no authority is so competent 
as Jesus to pass upon the Hebrew Scriptures, and 
no book can throw such light on the person and 
work of Christ as the books which were a prophetic 
preparation for his coming. It is quite beside the 
mark to say that two impeached witnesses in a court 
cannot establish each other's credibility. The case 
is widely different, as will appear. The opinion of 
Jesus on the Old Testament is worth more than all 
other voices combined, as twenty centuries of Chris- 
tian history, missions, life, and worship attest. The 
united testimony of prophet, law, and psalm to Je- 
sus, the preparation of the revelation for him, and 
(86) 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 87 

the culmination of history in him constitute a most 
significant witness to his work. The two receive 
higher corroboration from each other than they 
could from any other possible source; and it is the 
correlation, correspondence, and harmony of each 
with the other that lend credibility to both. 

Thus "the stability and integrity of our gospel are 
bound up with the inspiration and divine authority 
of the Old Testament." 1 This is the meaning of 
Paul when he says we are "built upon the founda- 
tion of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ him- 
self being the chief corner stone." 2 He unites and 
holds together the apostolic and prophetic teaching, 
and both become strong in him. "They do not sim- 
ply constitute separate parts, either of which may be 
removed without danger to the other. They are in- 
separably combined. Blot out from the New Testa- 
ment the features that identify it with the Old, and 
little will be left that is worth contending for." 3 
By its own terms the New Testament is committed 
to "such intimate and vital relationship to the Old 
Scriptures that they stand or fall together." 4 

"All scripture is given by inspiration of God," 5 
is the verdict of the New Testament on the Old. 
The Revised Version but serves to throw into the 
light the purpose for which the scripture was given. 

1 Bishop Wilson, "Witnesses to Christ," page 132. 
2 Ephesians ii. 20. 

3 Bishop Wilson, "Witnesses to Christ," page 133. *Ibid. 
B 2 Timothy iii. 16. 



88 Witnesses to the Word. 

"Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable 
for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for in- 
struction which is in righteousness: that the man 
of God may be complete, furnished completely unto 
every good work." 

In line with this all the Gospels, almost every 
epistle, Acts, and Revelation, refer to and use the 
Hebrew Scriptures. "They are brought forward, 
not as selected and preserved specimens of the high- 
est and best thought and literature of the nation, 
nor even as an element in its religious life, with a 
liturgical value and having the sanctity of worship 
attached to it, but as the authoritative standard of 
righteousness for the world, the divine revelation of 
things not seen, and only promise of hope to all 
men." 1 

What authority does the Bible derive from Jesus 
Christ ? In what sense does he indorse the Old Tes- 
tament and provide for the New ? It is the purpose 
of this paper to show that Jesus Christ has set the 
stamp of his authority upon the entire Bible. The 
Scriptures are the creation of the Spirit of Christ 2 
and bear his imprimatur.. 

It is clear from the four Gospel histories that 
Jesus wasr thoroughly familiar with the Old Testa- 
ment. He "either cites or refers to passages in the 
Old Testament Scriptures probably more than four 

1 Wilson, "Witnesses to Christ," page 135. 
2 2 Peter i. 10-12. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 89 

hundred times." 1 This is all the more remarkable 
when it is considered that the four Gospels contain 
but a fragment of all he said and did. From a 
child he must have known the Holy Scriptures, and 
they were "a means of supporting and developing 
his inner life of trust and obedience and contributed 
to the formation of his life and character." 2 

It will serve our purpose here to note how Jesus 
meets the first great crisis of his Messianic character 
and career. Immediately after his baptism he went 
into the wilderness and suffered himself to be tested 
and tempted in every fiber of his humanity before 
entering upon his public career. The story of this 
temptation must have been told by himself, for nei- 
ther friend nor kinsman went with him. Its inser- 
tion in the record is evidently his own thought and is 
done because of its revelation value for the Church. 
Three times does Jesus meet the tempter with the 
irrefragable defense: "It is written." Whether 
tempted to utilitarianism or spectacular presump- 
tion or political compromise, the appeal in each case 
must have been of the most awful and subtle charac- 
ter, searching the very foundations of his life and 
touching the basic elements of his Messianic office. 
In each case the appeal to scripture is irresistible to 
his enemy and full of comfort and strength to him- 
self. In such a temptation, when the fundamental 

1 Bishop Ellicott, "Christus Comprobator," page 91. Quoted 
by Bishop Candler. 

2 Dr. Alexander, "Son of Man," page 221. 



90 Witnesses to the Word. 

realities of life were being searched and settled, Je- 
sus quotes three times from the book of Deuteron- 
omy. 1 Such a use of this book in such an emergen- 
cy with such results poorly fits the theory that the 
book itself is a pious fraud forged by zealous re- 
formers to further the Josianic revival. 

One of his earliest discourses was in his own syn- 
agogue at Nazareth. "And he came to Nazareth, 
where he had been brought up: and, as his custom 
was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, 
and stood up for to read'. And there was delivered 
unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And 
when he had opened the book, he found the place 
where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon 
me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gos- 
pel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken- 
hearted, ... to preach the acceptable year of the 
Lord. And he closed the book, and he gave it again 
to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all 
them that were in the synagogue were fastened on 
him. And he began to say unto them, This day is 
this scripture fulfilled in your ears." 2 

He thus takes his text from the so-called "second 
Isaiah," and in the sermon which follows he alludes 
to the history and miracles of Elijah and Elisha as 
found in I Kings xvii. 9 and in 2 Kings v. 14. 

In his Sermon on the Mount he makes frequent 
allusions to the teachings which had been handed 

Deuteronomy viii. 3, vi. 16, vi. 13. 2 Luke iv. 16-21. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 91 

down from "them of old time." He speaks of him- 
self as a Revealer and Lawgiver, but he takes special 
pains to pass a verdict on the Hebrew Scriptures in 
the following words : "Think not that I am come to 
destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to 
destroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, 
Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall 
in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled." 
The jot, or "yodh," was the smallest character in 
the Hebrew alphabet, and the tittle was the small 
horn which was written on the Hebrew consonants 
to prevent confusion between similar characters. 
The meaning is this: "Nothing truly belonging to 
the law, however seemingly trivial, shall drift away 
and be forgotten until it has done all that it was 
meant to do." The "till all be fulfilled" means "till 
all things have come to pass." "The 'all things' are 
the great facts of our Lord's life, death, resurrec- 
tion, and the establishment of the kingdom of God. 
So taken, we find that the words do not assert, as 
at first they seem to do, the perpetual obligation even 
of the details of the law, but the limit up to which 
the obligation was to last, and they are therefore not 
inconsistent with the words which speak of the 
whole system of the law as 'decaying and waxing 
old and ready to vanish away' (Heb. viii. 13). The 
same formula is used in the Greek of Matthew xxiv. 
34. The two 'untils' have each of them their sig- 
nificance. Each 'jot' or 'tittle' must first complete 



92 Witnesses to the Word. 

its work; then, and not until then, will it pass 
away. 

Thus these words of the Old Bible are put very 
much on the same level with his own, for near the 
close of his own ministry he says: "Heaven and 
earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass 
away." 2 

When the Sadducees sought to entangle him in 
the dilemma of the seven husbands, 3 he answered 
with a passage from the book of Exodus : 4 "But as 
touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not 
read that which was spoken unto you by God, say- 
ing, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of 
Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God 
of the dead, but of the living." 

If we turn now to John x. 35, we find Jesus quot- 
ing from Psalm lxxxii. 6. He inserts as a paren- 
thesis these words: "And the scripture cannot be 
broken." Thus he stamps the whole Old Testament 
with his own authority and asserts its irrefragabil- 
ity. More particularly does he speak in Luke xxiv. 
27. Here it is said that Jesus, "beginning at Moses 
and all the prophets, expounded unto them in all the 
scriptures the things concerning himself." In the 
forty- fourth verse he says : "All things must be ful- 
filled which were written in the law of Moses, and 
in the prophets, and in the Psalms concerning me." 



1 Ellicott's "Bible Commentary," 191 loco. 

2 Matthew xxiv. 35. s Matthew xxii. 23-33. *Exodus iii. 6. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 93 

The Hebrew Scriptures consisted of "the law" (the 
first five books of the Old Testament) ; "the proph- 
ets" (most of the books we call prophetic and some 
of those we call historical) ; and the remaining 
books of the Old Testament, "the Psalms" and oth- 
er sacred writings. Thus Jesus takes each one up 
seriatim, and upon each separately and upon all 
three together he sets the seal of his approval and 
the stamp of his authority. 

Again, in Luke xvi. 31, he says : "If they hear not 
Moses and the prophets, neither will they be per- 
suaded, though one rose from the dead." In John 
v. 47 we find: "If ye believe not his [Moses's] writ- 
ings, how shall ye believe my words ?" In Mark vii. 
13, having quoted from the law of Moses, which he 
contrasts with the traditions of the Pharisees and 
scribes, he says: "You do make the word of God 
of none effect through your tradition." Here Jesus 
names the Scripture the "Word of God" and be- 
comes authority for that expression as applied to the 
Bible. 

It is worthy of note that in all of these four hun- 
dred allusions to the Scriptures Jesus never once 
quotes from nor refers to nor sounds an echo of 
"the Apocrypha." 1 He uses a free hand in quoting 
the inspired Scriptures, sometimes quoting literally 
and building an argument on one word and some- 
times quoting freely, preserving the sense and not 

1 Bishop Ellicott, "Christus Comprobator," page 122. 



94 Witnesses to the Word. 

the words. At least one quotation, so called, cannot 
even be identified in any known text of the Old Tes- 
tament. 1 He suits his inspired material to the imme- 
diate uses he puts it to, but it never suits him to use 
uninspired material. As there was no Messiah in 
the Apocrypha, it did not serve the purposes of the 
Messianic kingdom, nor was it of use to the Mes- 
sianic King. There is an apparent exception to this 
statement. In 2 Esdras i. 30 are the words: "I 
gathered you together as a hen gathereth her chick- 
ens under her wings ; but now, what shall I do unto 
you? I will cast you out from my face." These 
words, of course, remind us of Matthew xxiii. 37. 
In 2 Esdras ii. 34-48 and vii. 28, 29 a personal 
Messiah is presented and once called by name. But 
chapters i. and ii. entire, the passage in vii. 28, 29, 
and other places where the name of Jesus is inserted 
and chapters xv. and xvi. are interpolations in the 
time of the Christian era, some of them as late as 
268 A.D. 2 

It is, of course, impossible to notice all the quota- 
tions which Jesus makes from the Old Testament or 
the allusions and references to passages in it. He 
goes to it for personal inspiration. He appeals to it 
in settlement of disputed questions. He claims it in 
vindication of his Messiahship, and, both directly 



1 John vii. 38. 

2 Hastings's "Bible Dictionary," article on "2 Esdras"; and 
Appleton's "Universal Cyclopedia," article on "2 Esdras." 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 95 

and indirectly, he indorses it as "the word of God." 
This universal Man breaks the bands of narrow 
Judaism ; but his life is rooted in the Scripture, and 
he sees in his own personal life and teaching only 
the fulfillment of that which lay in the bosom of the 
old revelation. The old was like a seed, perfect as 
a seed, but provisional and prophetic. The revela- 
tion through the Son was the long-expected' fruit — 
full, perfect, and final. 

This brings us to another question: How shall 
we understand those passages in which Jesus asserts 
an authority superior to Moses as a lawgiver for the 
kingdom? Dr. Gross Alexander says: "While he 
acknowledges the divine authority of the revelation 
contained in the Old Testament, he was conscious 
of having himself a deeper and truer revelation and 
consequently assumed authority to amplify that ear- 
lier revelation and even to correct and abrogate parts 
thereof which did not accord with the deeper knowl- 
edge of truth and of God which he possessed." 1 

Let us see to what extent this is true, remember- 
ing that Jesus has absolutely and unreservedly de- 
clared the Old Testament to be — all of it and every 
part of it — inspired, irrefragable, and certain of 
fulfillment. In the Sermon on the Mount in several 
instances he sets himself in contrast with the law of 
Moses. He challenges attention with the words : 
"Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, 

1 Alexander, "Son of Man," page 225. 



g6 Witnesses to the Word. 

. . . but I say unto you.'' Here he says "I" with 
startling distinctness, for the translators have well 
conveyed the emphasis which the Greek puts on the 
pronoun of the first person. He assumes the func- 
tion of a lawgiver in relation to such fundamental 
and vital things as the Mosaic law had already 
passed on. "Where the Mosaic law forbade murder 
and adultery Jesus extends the principle of the pro- 
hibition so that it includes the passions of hate and 
lust and so puts a cherished passion on a parity with 
a committed crime. 

Again, he extended the Mosaic prohibition of 
false swearing and prohibited swearing altogether. 
"I say unto you. swear not at all.'" 1 He clearly sets 
up his own revelation as superior and his own au- 
thority as supreme. The law of retaliation is set 
aside, and in its stead is set up the startlingly differ- 
ent law of an all-conquering love that "beareth all 
things and endureth all things." 2 

A radical revision of a fundamental law is in the 
matter of divorce. 3 He simply repeals the Mosaic 
law of divorce and puts in its place his own law. 
which prohibits divorce altogether, save for one pos- 
sible 4 exception. He transcends the Hebrew law of 



x Matthew v. 33, 34. "Matthew v. 38, 39 ; 1 Corinthians xiii. 

s Deuteronomy xxiv. 1-3. 

4 See chapter on "Divorce" in Peabody's "Jesus Christ and 
the Social Question." 

5 In Matthew xix. 6, Mark x. 1-12. and Luke xvi. 18 Jesus is 
speaking of the remarriage element of divorce. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 97 

love to one's neighbor in his commands to love ene- 
mies and pray for persecutors. 1 

He exalts and clarifies the Old Testament idea of 
the kingdom of God, so that its ethical and spiritual 
characteristics may appear. The theocratic king- 
dom which was to come with a catastrophe becomes 
the kingdom of God, which is "without observa- 
tion/' The kingdom which was externally con- 
ceived becomes the kingdom "within you," a matter 
of experience. The kingdom which had for its 
background a glorified state becomes the kingdom 
whose Lawgiver is without earthly throne or au- 
thority, whose affiliations are spiritual, and whose 
penalties are purely providential and eternal. Again, 
it can hardly be denied that Jesus made an advance 
in the conception of God when he showed them how 
to feel toward God as toward a father and so turns 
the idea of God into the knowledge of the Godhead. 
He never says, "God of our fathers," nor "God of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" ; but it is "my Father" 
when he speaks for himself and "our Father" when 
he teaches his disciples to pray. He seems to say to 
men : "If you knew my Father like I know him, then 
you would love and trust him as I love and trust 
him." 

It is certain that Jesus considers the Old Testa- 
ment to be the "word of God," inspired, irrefraga- 
ble, certain of fulfillment, and having divine author- 
Matthew v. 43. 



98 Witnesses to the Word. 

ity. It is equally certain that Jesus feels himself a 
lawgiver who can finally interpret, extend, amplify, 
clarify, or correct the old revelation to suit the 
needs of men. Such a free and creative handling of 
the old law is proper to this Person, who is himself 
the Son of God, the full and final revelation of the 
Father's will. He feels and knows as no one else 
can that all these changes are in harmony with the 
inner spirit of the Old Testament; 1 that what was 
germinal there becomes germinant in his hands; 
that what was perfect as a seed is still but the im- 
perfect, provisional, prophetic preparation for the 
perfect, final fruit. 

The evangelists do not seem to feel this contrast 
between the teaching of Jesus about the Old Testa,- 
ment and his free and creative handling of it. The 
utter absence of any attempt to smooth it over, to 
make their Teacher more consistent with himself, 
is the finest kind of evidence that they but record the 
facts as they actually occurred. Jesus himself nei- 
ther recognizes it nor attempts to reconcile it. But 
Paul gives us a clue in his conception of the spiritual 
significance of the rite of circumcision. The author 
of the Epistle to the Hebrews has elaborated this 
clue into a marvelous vision of the typical and pro- 



1 Moses legislated for a Church enmeshed in a State; 
Christ for a kingdom which is "not of this world." Where 
Moses must seek to define and punish crime] "Christ deals 
with sin and sin alone. So Christ gives the perfect law. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 99 

phetic value of the entire Old Testament economy. 
This epistle, "as an exposition of the principles of 
the old economy and the link of connection between 
that and the new, stands unrivaled and alone." 1 In 
the light of the New Testament we are able to read 
the Bible, and this is the most reasonable and scien- 
tific way to read it. It was anticipatory, preparato- 
ry, and consciously directed to coming generations. 
"It became broader and deeper from age to age, 
like the waters of Ezekiel's vision that issued out 
from under the threshold of the temple, giving life 
and hope to the nations. In their due order of suc- 
cession the covenant, the law, and the prophets did 
their work, each carrying forward the line handed 
down to it by its predecessors, until the great repre- 
sentatives of the entire line, Moses and Elias, sur- 
rendered their prerogatives to him whose decease, 
which he should accomplish at Jerusalem, should 
bring to an end vision and prophecy, fulfill all prom- 
ise, and vindicate the word heard from heaven: 
This is my beloved Son : hear him.' " 2 

The scaffolding was not to be removed till it had 
perfectly served its purpose. Heathen hate could 
not tear it down, and the waste of the years could 
not wear it away. When at last the time had come 
for ritual, temple, type, prophet, priest, and king to 
pass, only the hands of the divine Carpenter were 

1 Bishop Wilson, "Witnesses to Christ," page 159. 
2 Ibid., pages 167-169. 



ioo Witnesses to the JVord. 

fitted to the task of taking the scaffold down and s a 
leave standing alone,, sublime and final, God's tem- 
ple of truth in man. 

The Old Testament is as the voice of a forerun- 
ner crying in the wilderness of a world without rev- 
elation: '''Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make 
straight in the [moral] desert a highway for our 
God." It was no reed of man's wisdom shaken by 
the wind of popular opinion. It was not clothed in 
soft raiment of mere earthly literature and philos- 
ophy: but, like the forerunner who summed up its 
voice and function, it received the indorsement of 
the Lord, who says to all the ages : "Search the 
scriptures : for in them ye think ye have eternal life : 
and they are they which testify of me." 

Is it possible to speak of the witness of Jesus to 
the Xew Testament? Yes: by way of anticipation, 
preparation, and prophecy, as well as by the harmo- 
ny of the Xew Testament writers with his inner life 
and purpose. Jesus took far more pains to denote 
and describe the written Word for the faith of the 
ages than he did to sketch the outlines of his 
Church. The Scriptures, which are but the Word 
made permanent, are the impersonated conscious- 
ness of Christ, "the organ by which he speaks crea- 
tively to his Church, rebukes its sins, measures its 
progress, judges its character and achievements 

^Fairbairn's "Place of Christ.'" page 499. 



••- 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 101 

The Church was created by the preaching of the 
Word. 

He takes the same pains to prepare for the New 
Testament that he does to indorse and interpret the 
Old. He enshrines himself in the Word, that 
through the Word he may create and as the ages 
unfold recreate his Church and exercise everywhere 
and always "his creative and normative functions. " 

In John xiv. 26 he declares that the coming O'f the 
Comforter is chiefly for this purpose: "The Com- 
forter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father 
will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, 
and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoev- 
er I have said unto you." As the incarnate Word 
was conceived by the Holy Ghost, so the written 
Word is the product of his inspiration. It was a 
bold prophecy for Jesus to make, but make it he did. 
The apostolic recollection of what he said and did 
and the apostolic gospel of the meaning of his life, 
death, and resurrection was to be, not a human, but 
a divine record. 

"When this vast body of divine testimony had 
been accumulated and perfected in the life, death, 
resurrection, and ascension of the incarnate Son, it 
was committed to the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, 
who alone was sufficient to reveal and interpret it 
to men. 

When we say that Jesus proclaimed the inspira- 

1 Bishop Wilson, "Witnesses to Christ," page 216. 



102 Witnesses to the Word. 

tion of the apostolic writings before they were writ- 
ten, the responsibility for that statement rests upon 
the Master himself. The chief purpose of the Spir- 
it's endowment was to fit the apostles to be his wit- 
nesses; and the sum total of the apostolic witness 
was the Word, which lived awhile as oral, then died 
as the oral, that it might live forever in the written 
Word. 

Jesus gives some hint of his reason for using this 
method in creating the Word in John xvi. 12, 13: 
"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye 
cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spir- 
it of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." 
To get the full gospel we must leave the first things 
of the Gospels and go on to the full and perfect un- 
folding of the gospel in the epistles. "Back to 
Christ" leads us to the feet of Him who said: "On 
to the apostles." 

It is evident that Jesus intended to give the same 
indorsement to the New Testament that he gave to 
the Old. He bears witness to the whole Bible. 
There is no Christ but the Christ of the New Testa- 
ment. There is no New Testament but the one 
which has its roots in the Old. There. is no word 
out of the divine heart and mind healing, leading, 
ruling the spirit of man but this "Word of God," 
quick and powerful, deathless and divine, which we 
call the Bible. 

The question has often been asked, "Is trie body 
of literature which we call the New Testament apos- 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 103 

tolic?" The Church has always believed that it is. 
There is no evidence that this faith has been or is 
about to be shaken. In the chapter on "The Trial 
of the Word" it was shown that the Bible has vin- 
dicated its fundamental and essential claims again 
and again in the face of trial. It is scarcely possible 
here even to sketch the argument that seeks to name 
the links of the chain that binds us historically to the 
apostolio literature. The evidences are fragmentary 
and often incidental; but, put together, they make 
the Christian tradition which stands unshaken, that 
the New Testament is that body of apostolic litera- 
ture which Jesus provided for and which holds 
primitive and essential Christianity in trust for the 
world. 

Clement of Rome, a contemporary of the apostles, 
appeals to the Gospels, Ephesians, 1 Corinthians, 
James, 1 Peter, and Hebrews. Ignatius, martyred 
about 107 A.D., quotes from Ephesians, Matthew, 
John, 1 Peter, James, Romans, Corinthians, 1 and 2 
Thessalonians, and 1 and 2 Timothy. Polycarp, 
who knew John, cites the Synoptic Gospels, the 
Acts, seven epistles of Paul, 1 Peter, and 1 John. 
A later age presents such evidence as that of Pa- 
pias, immediately following the age of the apostles; 
Justin Martyr (A.D. 140) ; Tatian (A.D. 172) ; 
Irenseu9 (A.D. 170), who speaks of every book in 
the New Testament but Philemon, 3 John, and Jude; 
Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 200), who* names the 
four Gospels in order and quotes all the books of the 



104 Witnesses to the Word. 

New Testament by name; and Origen (A.D. 185- 
253), who quotes every book in the New Testament 
so fully that the whole New Testament might almost 
be reproduced from his writings. 1 Origen was 
nearer to the time when the New Testament was 
being written than we are to the time when Thomas 
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. 
Clement and Origen were learned and voluminous 
writers, who traveled extensively and studied the ori- 
gins of Christianity and were nearer "the sources" 
than Woodrow Wilson was when he wrote the 
"History of the American People/' By the last 
quarter of the second century (175-200 A.D.) we 
find "the four Gospels — the four we have and none 
else — in universal circulation and undisputed use 
throughout the Church, unanimously ascribed to the 
authors whose names they bear, circulating not only 
in their original tongues, but in Latin, Syriac, and 
other translations, freely used not only by fathers 
of the Church, but by pagans and heretics and by 
these also ascribed to the disciples of Christ as their 
authors." 1 The evidence is widely scattered and 
hence all the more convincing. "Irenseus and the 
'Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons' are 
in Gaul; Heracleon, in Italy; Tertullian, at Car- 
thage; Polycrates, at Ephesus; Theophilus, in An- 
tioch; Tatian, at Rome and in Syria; Clement, at 

1 Bishop Candler, "Christus Auctor," pages 200, 201. 
2 Orr, "Bible under Trial," pages 175, 176. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 105 

Alexandria. The strategical positions are occupied, 
one might say, all over the empire. The fourfold 
Gospel is regarded, for the most part, as one and 
indivisible." 1 

The effort to break down this tradition and to 
discredit the literature of the early Church has itself 
broken down. More than a decade ago the brilliant 
and learned Dr. Harnack declared in his work on 
"Old Christian Literature" that "the results might 
be summed up by saying that the oldest literature of 
the Church in its main points and in most of its 
details, from the point of view of literary history, 
was veracious and trustworthy." 2 In his recent 
book on "Luke the Physician" he reaffirms this 
opinion even more strongly and says in the Preface, 
"I hope to have shown in the following pages that 
criticism has gone wrong and that tradition is 
right"; and he reminds his readers that, ten years 
before, he told them that "in the criticism of the 
sources of the oldest Christianity we are in a move- 
ment backward to tradition." 3 

Harnack breaks with the so-called settled results 
of criticism and champions the Lucan authorship of 
the third Gospel and of the Acts. Ramsay breaks 
with the Tubingen criticism and becomes the bril- 
liant and versatile defender of the historical accu- 
racy of Luke's writings. The Unitarian Dr. Drum- 

1 Sanday, "Fourth Gospel," page 238. Quoted by Dr. Orr. 
2 "01d Christian Literature," Preface. Quoted by Dr. Orr. 
3 "Luke the Physician," Preface. Quoted by Dr. Orr. 



106 Witnesses to the Word. 

mond clears the air, as Dr. Sanday has said, on the 
Johannine problem by his work, "The Character 
and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel," a convincing 
defense of its genuineness : and with him stand such 
scholars as Dr. Stanton. Dr. Sanday, and Professor 
Peake. 

"V\~hen critics of the first rank begin to criticize 
criticism, then indeed is the "revolution beginning 
to devour its own children" and the fashion to dis- 
believe everything which has been once believed is 
about to spend itself. 

The most important link in all this chain is Paul, 
and around him the controversies of the ages have 
gathered. In vain have the purveyors of theological 
novelties sought to make him the founder of Chris- 
tianity, obscuring the so-called primitive gospel of 
the Galilean Teacher. This conception of Paul as 
the obscurantist, who perverted the simple gospel of 
the Xazarene into a system of rigid and difficult 
dogma, is a mis judgment, says Deissmann in his 
new book on Paul. 1 'This figure,'''' he says, "is a 
creation of our modern 'Paulinisnr* " ; and he leads 
the way back from this Germanized, modernized 
Paul of the dogmas to Paul the man, the missionary, 
the hero of piety, who lives in Christ and knows 
nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. 

When this attitude is being taken toward Paul 
by scholars of world-wide eminence, and when Dr. 

1 DeissmanTi, "Paulus," Tubingen. 191 1. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 107 

Deissmann's colleague at Berlin, Dr. Harnack, puts 
practically the entire body of the so-called Pauline 
Epistles back into his hands, we begin to see that 
Paul is indeed the witness that guarantees, that in 
the New Testament we are in touch with the sources 
of Christian life and doctrine. Paul knew the 
brother o>f our Lord and no doubt talked with his 
mother, besides holding frequent intercourse with 
various disciples. His conversion to the new faith 
and way and his lifelong devotion to the cause of 
his Master are evidences of the highest possible va- 
lidity to the historical reality of the gospel. The 
complete harmony between the Christianity of the 
Gospel and the Christianity of the Pauline Epistles 
imparts a sense of unity and integrity to the whole 
body of New Testament literature and becomes the 
greatest evidence of its historical character and apos- 
tolic quality. Paul we know, and his writings we 
have. Through him Jesus comes in contact with 
the world as the historical Christ, in order that he 
may become to men the risen Lord and mighty Sav- 
iour. This body of apostolic literature Jesus antici- 
pated, witnessed to its inspiration, and foretold, that 
it would continue in the world the activities of his 
own Spirit and Person. He put his imprimatur on 
both the Testaments. In him they come together. 
Each supports the other in him, and both are im- 
measurably strong. 



CHAPTER V. 

The Witness of Jesus to the Bible (Contin- 
ued) — Who Was He? or, The Person of Je- 
sus the Supreme Credential of Christian- 
ity. 

WHEN we open the New Testament, we find 
ourselves in the presence of a glowing reli- 
gious life. There is nothing in the world which 
offers any real parallel either to this life or to the 
collection of books which attests it. The soul which 
in contemporary literature is bound in shallows and 
in miseries is here raised as on a great tidal wave 
of spiritual blessing. Nothing that belongs to a 
complete religious life is wanting, neither convic- 
tions nor motives, neither penitence nor ideals, nei- 
ther vocation nor the assurance of victory." 1 

But the New Testament itself must have a cause. 
The life that is in it must flow from a Life. Such 
forces can come only from a Founder, such Chris- 
tianity from a Christ. It is as necessary in reason to 
find a reason for the existence of the New Testament 
as it is to find a reason for the existence of any fact 
whatsoever in nature or philosophy. When we ask 

1 Dennv, "J esu s and the Gospel," page i. 

(108) 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 109 

for the rational cause of this fact, it is not far to seek. 
The religious life of the New Testament is deter- 
mined by Christ. It is faith in God through him, and 
in this faith he is Founder and Finisher. This deter- 
mines everything characteristic in Christianity. "Its 
convictions are convictions about him. Its hopes 
are hopes which he has inspired and which it is for 
him to fulfill. Its ideals are born of his teaching and 
his life. Its strength is the strength of his Spirit." 3 

It is the purpose of this chapter to hold up to 
view this Jesus whose portrait is presented in the 
four Gospels. What impression is made on us by 
such a study? Do the four stories blend into> one 
life ? Do we feel as we read the story that this is a 
real Person? Does this Person impress us as being 
divine, the kind of Person who would claim for 
himself and naturally receive the homage that Christ 
has held in the faith of the Church? These ques- 
tions go to the heart of the problem, and it is the 
purpose of this chapter to give a reasonable answer 
to them. 

I hold in my hand the four Gospels. I do not 
stop now to ask what Clement or Origen or Justin 
said about them. I lay aside the chain of external 
evidence that binds uncontested history to the liter- 
ature of the New Testament. I am not supposed to 
know whether these Gospels are real histories or a 
collection of tales nor when they were written nor 

1 Dcnny, "J e sus an( j the Gospel," page 1. 



no Witnesses to the Word. 

by whom nor why. I find the life story of Jesus 
written by four different writers; yet there is one 
Lord, one faith, one life, and such a life as declares 
him to be divine. This method of study lets Jesus 
make his own impression and, from the divine Per- 
son that moves through the pages, finds evidence 
that such pages are themselves precious with the 
light of inspiration. In such a study the figure of 
Jesus stands out so spiritual, so commanding, so 
victorious, and so real that one must exclaim with 
Peter, "Thou art the Christ!" and confess with 
Thomas, "My Lord and my God." Jesus himself is 
thus the supreme wonder of the Bible. He is the 
Keystone of the arch. Christianity is founded on 
the apostles and prophets, but Jesus is the Head- 
stone of the corner. He makes his own impression 
of divinity; and if he fails to win the worship of the 
heart, all arguments to prove him divine would be 
an impertinence. The Bible is divine in that it gives 
him to the world, and he makes the case for the Bi- 
ble incontestable. 

The character of Jesus is absolutely unique in the 
annals of the human mind. To tell the story of his 
life is to unfold a character radically different in all 
essential respects from all mortals, ordinary or ex- 
traordinary, man or superman. This difference is 
manifest at his very birth. In words of beautiful 
reticence the event is foretold, and the heart is 
warned to await the advent of that "holy thing." 
The story has a more than human sweetness and 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible, 1 1 1 

simplicity and is clothed with an air of wonder as 
the sacred mystery of human birth is suffused with 
the still higher mystery of the incarnation. How 
exquisitely the writers have "caught the pathos of a 
true man's tenderness and trust and the surpassing 
faith of the virgin waiting for her vindication ! The 
light that was in the face of the angel of the annun- 
ciation still shines in the words, and the music of 
the angel's song is in them still. This story stands 
as among those things most surely believed from the 
beginning, written down by one who diligently 
searched and sifted his material from those who 
were the eyewitnesses and the original "ministers of 
the word." 1 Note that this account was written in the 
lifetime of those who knew the Lord and his mother 
and his brethren; and it was written by one (Luke) 
who knew Paul, who himself knew the Lord's broth- 
ers and Peter. It was received without protest or 
challenge by the original band of believers as the 
primary and authentic account of the Lord's birth. 
Note also the moral beauty of the narrative, the 
reticent revealing of supernatural mysteries, its pro- 
phetic purpose, its utter and surpassing spirituality, 
and its consistency with the estimate Jesus has of 
himself and the place he holds in the faith of the 
New Testament Church. These considerations 
stamp the character of Jesus as absolutely unique in 
the story of his birth. 

1 Lnke i. I, 2. 



ii2 Witnesses to the Word. 

This character was among men as a Teacher who 
impressed his hearers as having spoken as never man 
spake before. Nineteen centuries have passed; and 
more than ever men feel that he stands absolutely 
alone as a religious Teacher, Leader, and Guide. 
His parables were like miracles of wisdom. His 
miracles were like parables of power. Deissmann 
has said that the words and sayings of Jesus are 
not separate pearls threaded on one string, but 
flashes of one and the same diamond, the truth and 
its author not separable. 1 

So simple was his manner that the common people 
understood him and heard him gladly. He trusted 
himself to the plain people, to the common instincts 
of men, and to the native moral consciousness of the 
race. He dared to be the simplest teacher the world 
has ever known. Out of the simple things the peo- 
ple knew in their daily lives he built parables and 
illustrations to make his truth plain. He teaches 
without effort; and his desire is not to make the 
truth appear deep or strong, but simple and clear. 
He never takes his illustrations from the arts and 
sciences nor from literature, except the literature of 
the Old Testament. He illustrates from daily life 
and from nature, the home, the farm, and the street. 
Yet these words present ideals that are recognized 
as the unattained heights of spiritual glory for the 
race, and these simple sentences and homely stories 

1 Quoted by Dr. Denny in "Jesus and the Gospel." 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 113 

furnish truths which are unfathomable in their 
depth of meaning for the moral life of men. Of 
learning, so called, he presents not an echo except 
his knowledge of the Old Testament; yet he has 
been the Master of the world's masters and the 
Teacher of the world's teachers as no other human 
intellect has ever been. 

He is different from other teachers in that he 
never made a so-called system of thought or body of 
doctrine. Any system can be made a cross on which 
to crucify freedom, and any body of doctrine may 
be made a procrustean bed on which to break the 
warm and vital limbs of faith ; but Jesus said : "The 
words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and 
they are life." 1 "The greater the mere man, the 
more he tries to explain the universe, to find a for- 
mula large enough to contain it, to classify its facts 
and correlate its forces. Think of these men and 
the few whose names should go with them : Socra- 
tes, Plato, Aristotle, Origen, Augustine, Pelagius, 
Athanasius, Calvin, Edwards, Leibnitz, Bacon, 
Humboldt, Kant, Cuvier, and perhaps some new 
men. Philosophers, scientists, theologians — they 
are all alike in this : they are building a system, a 
philosophy of the universe. He nowhere accounts 
for things. He has not a word about the 'cosmos.' 
In him there seems to be no consciousness of the 
mysteries of the universe either as to its origin or 

1 John vi. 63. 

8 



ii4 Witnesses to the Word. 

nature. He did not explain God or philosophize 
about God. It was John, not Jesus, who wrote of 
the Logos. Jesus offers no philosophy of the plan 
of salvation. He does not philosophize concerning 
faith or prayer or immortal ity." 1 

He is different from other teachers, again, in the; 
sense that he speaks with a tone of peculiar author- 
ity. This caused the people to* be astonished at his 
doctrine. Jesus does not argue; he announces. He 
does not seek to prove, but to explain. The solemn 
import of his words, "But I say unto you/' is not 
to be missed; and it is impossible to imagine them 
without fatal incongruity on any lips but his own. 
This is what Dr. Denny calls his legislative con- 
sciousness. "There can be no greater contrast than 
that between the prophetic consciousness as we can 
discern it from the Old Testament and the con- 
sciousness of Jesus as it is revealed in the Sermon on 
the Mount. There is not in the Old Testament the 
remotest analogy to such words as, 'Ye have heard 
that it was said of old time, but I say unto you/ 
The sovereign legislative authority which breathes 
throughout the Sermon on the Mount stands abso- 
lutely alone in Scripture." 2 He still asserts his unri- 
valed right to command and confronts the world to- 
day with its perils of sin and its problems of society 
with those quiet words, "But I say unto you." 



1 Bishop Haygood, "Man of Galilee," pages 64, 65. 
2 Denny, "Jesus and the Gospel," pages 244, 245. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 115 

Jesus's method of thought is native to himself 
and is not approached by any other thinker the 
world has ever had. He never seems to investigate 
or seek or find or discover truth. Truth seems to 
be native to him. It is not detached that he must 
seek, or distant that he must strain his eyes to see, 
or hidden that he must discover. He seems to 
know. For him to know himself is to know the 
truth. 1 There seem to be no processes of knowledge 
with Jesus, nor strain of achievement as if he were 
striving to know, nor intellectual heats as men feel 
when they find and cry, "Eureka !" The mightiest 
and sublimest revelations of God and insights into 
duty and destiny he makes as simply as if he were 
breathing out of himself and as if he were infinitely 
more than anything he had ever said. He is never 
"stung by the splendor of a sudden thought." He 
does not leap to his feet like Kepler and say, "O 
God, I am thinking thy thoughts after thee"; nor 
does the pen fall from his agitated hand as it did 
from Newton's when he foresaw the successful end 
of the calculation which established a new law of 
the universe. His knowledge was native, natural, 
and inexhaustible, because his knowledge and his life 
were one. The truth coalesces into the unity of the 
Speaker and his life. 2 

This knoweldge, he declares, is peculiar to him- 



a John xiv. 6. 

2 Denny, "Jesus and the Gospel," page 196. 



n6 Witnesses to the Word. 

self, and there, is nothing like it except the spirit- 
ual insight he confers on men who follow him in 
faith. 1 No wonder they who had been sent to ar- 
rest him returned to say, "Never man spake like this 
man ! 

This Jesus of the New Testament is a Person who 
performs innumerable works of power such as no 
mere man ever wrought. Each of the four Gospels 
is a miracle Gospel. Mark, supposed to be the earli- 
est, was written down in a book 65-70 A.D. (Har- 
nack), while many of the original followers of 
our Lord were still alive. Each of the four has 
also the story of the passion and resurrection. 
The non-Markan source (the so-called O), which, 
together with Mark, is supposed to have formed the 
basis of Matthew and Luke, is itself a miracle 
source. If there was a Jesus who simply taught and 
exercised no miraculous powers and made no claim 
to such, there is of such a person and such a move- 
ment not the trace of a record left. The miracle 
Gospels have the whole field to themselves. We 
have no historical connection with a Jesus who 
worked no miracles. If there was such a Jesus, the 
true story of him perished, and the miracle Gospels 
were written down while eyewitnesses of the truth 
were still living. Men have constructed out of our 
Gospels a nonmiracle Gospel story, as Jefferson did ; 
but the fact remains that the miracle Gospels were 

1 Matthew xi. 27. 2 John vii. 46. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 117 

in the field first and, historically speaking, have the 
whole field to themselves. 

These recorded works of power, some thirty-three 
in number, are said to be but a few of his marvelous 
works, beginning with the wedding at Cana of 
Galilee, when he began through them to show forth 
his glory. A study of these selected instances will 
reveal a reasonable order and a moral meaning such 
as could not belong to a mere string of marvels. 
They clothe Jesus with an air of majesty and mas- 
tery — Master of the forces of nature, the diseases 
of the body, the maladies of the mind, and over 
death itself. 

The English word "miracles" is not the best word 
to express that which is called at times "wonders," 
"signs," "powers," "works." We find continually 
in the Gospels "signs and wonders," but never 
"wonders" alone; and the almost exclusive use of 
the word "miracle" in English and "wunder" in 
German serves to lay the main stress on that element 
in the mighty work which was not the most signifi- 
cant. Wonderful as they are, they are signs and 
pledges of something beyond and above themselves. 
They are signs of the Master's grace and power and 
revealings of the higher world of order, beauty, 
truth, and love. This draws the sharp line between 
the gracious works of Christ and the mere marvels 
which abound in the uncanonical Gospels and in 
heathen literature. 

In the Gospels the word, the work, and the work- 



n8 Witnesses to the Word. 

er are so related that neither stands alone, and each 
bears witness to the other two. They cannot be torn 
apart without doing violence to the portrait of Jesus 
as we find it. He expresses himself as naturally and 
as easily through the works of power as through the 
parable or sermon. They both inhere in him and 
seem native to him. They are characteristic of him, 
and both alike bear the stamp of his personality. 
They express his purpose and reveal his spirit. 
They are redemptive acts and words because he is 
the Redeemer. The miracle fits his hand as easily 
as the parable becomes his speech, and both serve to 
reveal the majesty of his love and life. Such works 
are not to be compared to "mere freaks and plays of 
power, done as in wantonness and for their own 
sakes, with no need compelling, for show and os- 
tentation. " The moral deeps and the spiritual beau- 
ties of Jesus's miracles appear most clearly when 
seen against the dark background of heathen magic. 
Think of the so-called miracles of Simon Magus, 
whose dogs of brass and stone were made to bark. 
his statues to talk: who made himself to fly through 
the air, to appear now a serpent, now a goat, now 
with one face, now with two. to roll unhurt on burn- 
ing coals, etc. 1 Xot only are such things lacking in 
the Gospel narratives, but Jesus is shown to have set 
all this aside as one of the radical temptations of 
his life. False Christs will seek to establish their 

French on '"Miracles," page 31. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 119 

claims with mere marvels, "great wonders" ;* but 
not so with Jesus. His miracles are ethical acts and 
have relations to his Person and to the needs of men. 
They move in the sphere of redemption and serve 
purposes of revelation. The doctrine tries the mir- 
acle, and the miracle seals the doctrine; and both 
manifest forth his glory, and his disciples believe on 
him. 

But the full proportions of this figure will never 
be appreciated until it is studied from within. This 
character, whether real or imaginary, whether hu- 
man or divine, reveals himself in a series of self- 
revelations. We will confine attention to those parts 
of the record which are oldest and least liable to 
critical objection. 

1. In his baptism Jesus begins to reveal the con- 
sciousness that he was to live a life and do a work 
that cannot be classed as human. This account of 
the baptism belongs to the earliest materials of the 
Gospel narrative and has been preserved for us in 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke. That Jesus attaches a 
deep significance to this experience is manifest ; and 
the Gospel writers preserve it as fact, though it af- 
fords some embarrassment to their faith. 2 Mark's 
account is as follows : "And it came to pass in those 
days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and 
was baptized of John in the Jordan. And straight- 
way coming up out of the water, he saw the heav- 

^ark xiii. 22. 2 Matthew iii. 14/. 



120 Witnesses to the Word. 

ens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descend- 
ing upon him: and a voice came out of the heavens, 
Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well 
pleased." 1 

Jesus looks on this as the beginning of his life 
work. All has been held in check up to this mo^ 
ment. No miracles are wrought in childhood, 
though the puerile miracles of the infancy are the 
disgrace of the apocryphal Gospels. Now the 
time has come. The Spirit descends, and from this 
time on Jesus manifests a native and simple con- 
sciousness that a divine power through that descent 
and from that hour has entered into his life. The 
heavenly voice, whether objective or subjective, 
whether a spiritual or a physical phenomenon, uses 
the words of the Old Testament. "The first clause, 
'Thou art my Son/ comes from the second Psalm, 
where it is addressed by God to the ideal King of 
Israel. The second clause, 'the beloved, in whom I 
am well pleased/ goes in the same way to Isaiah 
xlii. and recalls the servant of the Lord on whom 
God puts his Spirit." 2 These visions and voices give 
us an insight into the inner life of Jesus and reveal 
his consciousness of himself as entering upon a 
unique and, indeed, divine vocation and having a 
divine equipment for it. This consciousness of him- 
self thus early manifest is consistently effective 
throughout his whole life. He is never once false 

*Mark i. 9-1 1. 2 Denny, "Jesus and the Gospel," page 203. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 121 

to it, and never once does it appear in any other way 
than native, simple, easy, the base line and "vindi- 
cation of his whole attitude to men and of the atti- 
tude of his followers to him/' 1 

2. Mark relates the story of the temptation in 
barest outlines. "And immediately the Spirit driv- 
eth him into the wilderness. And he was there in 
the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and 
was with the wild beasts ; and the angels ministered 
unto him." 2 Matthew and Luke give the story in 
a framework of poetic symbolism. The story must, 
of course, come from the Saviour himself; and he 
doubtless referred to it at times in terms of extreme 
brevity, as in Mark, and at other times with a fuller 
unfolding of its issues and experiences. Jesus was 
tempted in all points like as we are, but no man was 
ever tempted as he was at this time. He is keenly 
conscious that this is a unique experience, that it 
marked the threshold of his public career and com- 
pleted his fitness and equipment for his life work. 
He has been declared by the voice to- be God's Son 
and has felt the descent of the dove bringing the 
consciousness of divine power. The first of these 
temptations involved the exercise of that power; 
and the other two involved his trust in God, his 
Father, and all alike concerned the question of how 
this King and Son is to realize his kingdom. He 



1 Denny, "J es us and the Gospel," page 204. 
2 Mark i. 12, 13. 



122 Witnesses to the Word. 

feels that his choice has vaster issues than simply 
a good man's fight for personal integrity. He, the 
King and Son, is about to set up the kingdom. He 
will not build it on bread nor on show, and he will 
not make any alliance with evil. He will not seek 
ascendancy over men by an appeal to the senses nor 
by concessions to sin. The ends of his kingdom are 
spiritual; and the means to reach them must be the 
same, however slow the progress or full of pain and 
terror the path to final success. In his temptation 
the fate of this kingdom hangs in the balance. His 
choice of the good is the pledge of its final triumph. 
His person and its destiny are identical in his mind. 
"The kingdom of God is in the mind of Jesus es- 
sentially bound up with himself." 1 

3. That Jesus is conscious of the supreme signifi- 
cance of his Person is shown in the way he called 
men to be his disciples and the conditions on which 
he based such discipleship. "Follow me," he said, 
"and I will make you fishers of men" for the king- 
dom. He saw in "the twelve" the founders of the 
new Israel. Relation to his Person is to fix a man's 
place in that kingdom. They were to be called be- 
fore governors and kings for his sake; and he as- 
sures them that "Every one therefore who shall 
confess me before men, him will I also confess before 
my Father which is in heaven." : So that Jesus con- 

a Denny, "Jesus and the Gospel," page 213. 
2 Matthew x. 32. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 123 

ceives of himself as having for the souls of men such 
a supreme significance as to determine the matter of 
final destiny. Only one who feels that he sustains a 
unique relation to God, to human history, to God's 
kingdom, and a supreme relation to the souls of men 
could so speak without insanity. Add to this the 
words of Matthew: "And he that taketh not his 
cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me." 1 
"There is nothing theological in the attitude of Je- 
sus here, no filling of a role ; whether it be the Mes- 
sianic or another; but there is the revelation of a 
consciousness to which history presents no parallel. 
Consider how great this Man is who declares that 
the final destiny of men depends on whether or not 
they are loyal to him and who demands absolute 
loyalty, though it involve the sacrifice of the tender- 
est affections or the surrender of life in the most 
ignominious death.. There are things too wonderful 
for invention or imagination, things which could nev- 
er have been conceived unless they were true; and, 
not to speak of the witness of the Spirit or their his- 
torical authentication, the sayings of Jesus that we 
have just been considering belong to this class of 
things. We should accept them, were it for nothing 
else, because of the incredible way in which they 
transcend all imaginable words of common men." 2 
4. Notice has already been taken of that tone of 



1 Matthew x. 38. 

2 Denny, "Jesus and the Gospel," pages 237, 240. 



124 Witnesses to the Word* 

authority with which Jesus spoke on matters of duty 
and destiny and how he dared to interpret and am- 
plify the Mosaic law. Again and again in the Ser- 
mon on the Mount he reviews the old laws and cus- 
toms and adds, "But I say unto you." No prophet 
of the Old Testament spoke with that tone, and no 
writer in the New imitates it. It is peculiar to Je- 
sus and reveals his legislative consciousness, which 
is all the more remarkable in one who indorsed the 
Old Testament and who drew from it and drank of 
it as Jesus did. He saw himself as that perfect rev- 
elation of which the Old was the preparation and in 
which the Old was fulfilled. "Think not that I am 
come to destroy the law or the prophets : I am not 
come to destroy, but to fulfill." 1 This is the same 
Person we met in the baptism, who feels that all the 
issues of the kingdom meet in the hour of his temp- 
tation, who lays down in words no human lips are 
entitled to utter the conditions of discipleship and 
assumes without arrogance or excitement the awful 
functions of Lawgiver and Judge. How solemnly 
the office of lawgiver passes into that of judge is 
seen in the closing words of the Sermon, where he 
says : "Every one that heareth these sayings of mine, 
and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish 
man, who built his house upon the sand.' ,! The 
Speaker speaks as no man ever spoke before, because 
he knows that the Speaker and the Judge are one. 

^latthew v. 17. "Matthew vii. 26. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 125 

These words of the Sermon bring us as close to 
Jesus as history can take us. They lie behind the 
first and third Gospels. They rest on the oldest of 
gospel material; and here, as elsewhere, the New 
Testament attitude toward Jesus is justified by the 
witness Jesus bears to himself. 1 

5. When Jesus declares, "All things are delivered 
unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the 
Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the 
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
Son will [willeth to] reveal him," 2 he says things 
which make him absolutely incomprehensible except 
on the ground that he is what he is conscious of 
being. He feels that he is in such a relation to the 
Father that he has received from him life and truth 
and power in a manner and measure that are not 
limited, as all mortal life and knowledge are. The 
Son stands out just as single and solitary as the 
Father. There is but one Son in his consciousness, 
as there is but one Father; and this correspondence 
of Father and Son in the mind of Jesus justifies his 
followers in looking on him as the Son of God in 
a solitary sense. He declares that he alone knows 
God in that Father-knowledge of him which brings 
blessedness and life and that all men are dependent 
on him and his gracious will for that knowledge. 3 
How could words more completely justify the atti- 

1 Denny, "Jesus and the Gospel," page 253. 

2 Matthew xi. 27. 

3 Alexander, "Son of Man," page 273. 



126 Witnesses to the Word. 

tude of faith toward Jesus than these words in their 
revelation of his consciousness ? 

6. Not only do the Xew Testament writers declare 
that the life of Jesus was without sin or fault, 1 but 
Jesus himself asserts as much for himself." He 
says that he always does the things that please his 
Heavenly Father and that, therefore, he has un- 
broken fellowship with him. There are many in- 
direct evidences which are conclusive indications 
that Jesus was absolutely without the consciousness 
of moral fault There never appears in him the 
slightest trace of any feeling of penitence or of re- 
gret for what he has said or done. Xo prayer for 
forgiveness ever crosses his lips. He never gives 
expression to the consciousness of enjoying for the 
first time peace with God or of coming into harmony 
with God. He knows nothing else but to be the Son 
of his Heavenly Father and is always conscious of 
his Fathers love and approval, while all others must 
first become sons, and even then they must pray 
for the forgiveness of sins. He sets himself over 
against the whole race of sinful men as their Re- 
deemer and ultimately as their Judge. 

''These are facts." says Weiss, ; 'which no criti- 
cism can shake. They speak for themselves. He 
who has removed from the eyes of all the blindness 

-i Pe:er ii. 22, iii. 18; 2 Corinthians v. 21; Hebrews iv. 15: 
Teh:: viii. _f. 
"John viii. 29. 
3 Alexander, "Son of Man." page 269. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 12 7 

of self-deception and of self-righteousness, who has 
taught us all to seek forgiveness where it is to be 
found, he was either the chief of sinners (for self- 
righteous pride is the root and climax of sin), or he, 
was the only sinless one." 

7. In no one of his miracles does Jesus reveal 
more clearly the inmost secret of his self-knowledge 
than in the healing of the paralytic. 1 "When Jesus 
saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, 
Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." Here Jesus in- 
dorses a faith which has himself for its object and 
rewards it with the exercise of a prerogative which 
can belong to God alone. Jesus does not simply 
declare the man sinless any more than he simply de- 
clares him well. 2 He forgives him and then heals 
him. Dr. Denny clearly shows the failure of criti- 
cism to reduce this passage to a mere statement "that 
man has power on earth to forgive sins." A slip by 
Mark in translating from an Aramaic document is 
assumed to have taken place, inserting the term 
"Son of man" where it did not belong. But even if 
this were true, it could hardly have marred the en- 
tire apostolic tradition, nor could a miracle by one 
man serve as proof that any man can forgive sins. 
Man, generically, can no more forgive sins than 
man, generically, can heal the lame. It is Jesus, the 
Son of Man, who makes the palsied whole as evi- 



1 Mark ii. 1-12. 

2 Denny, "Jesus and the Gospel," pages 307, 308. 



128 Witnesses to the Word. 

dence that he can also lift the paralysis of sin from 
the soul. This is precisely the vocation of the Son 
of Man in establishing the kingdom of God, which 
is a kingdom of grace and of truth, forgiving all 
their iniquities and healing all their diseases. Such 
self-knowledge is solitary in the psychology of the 
race. He challenges the scribes and Pharisees to 
convict him of sin; he calls his Father to witness 
that his inmost thought and outer act are always 
well-pleasing in his sight ; he asserts authority to heal 
all disease and to forgive all sin on the simple con- 
dition of faith in himself; and he does this with a 
spirit and manner that convinces all men that he is 
"meek and lowly in heart." 1 

8. No study of the inner life of Jesus could be 
complete without an examination of the term "the 
Son of man/' which is found so often on his lips, 
especially when he speaks of his vocation and his 
relation to the kingdom of God. This title is never 
used in the Gospels on any lips but those of Jesus 
and in the English translation always occurs as 
"the Son of man." It was such a title as could not 
be used as a party cry in a Messianic controversy, 
and there is no point in the criticism that it could 
not occur on the lips of Jesus until after the con- 
fession at Csesarea Philippi. It is enough like the 
expression "Son of man," which occurs repeatedly, 
in the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, and elsewhere, to 

1 Matthew xi. 29. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible, 129 

suit the purpose of Jesus to use a term which would 
reveal more and more to the growing vision of faith 
without becoming a firebrand to useless political 
controversies. 

The title no doubt goes back to Daniel vii. 13. 
Out of the restless sea of humanity, blown upon by 
the four winds of blind natural forces, there arise, 
one after another, kingdoms and civilizations — lion, 
leopard, bear, and the unnamed beast. All are brute 
forces of human nature, each devoured in turn by 
that which follows. But out of the heavens, not up 
from the sea, comes one like the Son of Man, "and 
there was given dominion, and glory, and a king- 
dom, that all people, nations, and languages, should 
serve him : his dominion is an everlasting dominion, 
which shall not pass away." 

The earthly kingdoms, the fairest and best, are 
brutal and founded upon force ; but this kingdom is 
given to One who brings in the reign of humanity 
and promises that the human shall prevail over the 
brute. This title furnishes Jesus with the very term 
he needs.. The term occurs "in every strata of the 
evangelic records which criticism has learned to dis- 
tinguish. It is found in Mark, in the non-Markan 
source common to Matthew and Luke, in passages 
peculiar to Matthew and Luke, respectively, and in 
John." In his own consciousness Jesus is the Son 
of man, because his kingdom is a kingdom of hu- 

^^Denny, "J esu s and the Gospel," page 286. 

9 



130 Witnesses to the Word. 

manity, filling out the ideals of Isaiah ix. 6, 7, xi. 
1-9, Micah iv. 1-7, and elsewhere in the prophets 
and Psalms. He is the Son of man because of the 
"stock whence he springs* — man, humanity, man- 
kind; the Son of man is no man's Son." 1 It ex- 
presses his solitude and preeminence. He has no 
fellow. He is not a son of man, but "the Son of 
man." With the lowliness is the implication of a 
transcendent personality which cannot share with 
another his relation to the human race. The final 
triumph of the human over the brutal in the coming 
of the kingdom is his own triumph. In such pas- 
sages as Matthew xxiv. 2j, 37, 39, 44 and Luke 
xvii. 24, 26, 30, xii. 40 Jesus speaks of himself as 
the Person in whom the glorious vision of Daniel 
vii. 13/ is to be finally fulfilled. "Nothing marks 
off his consciousness of himself more distinctly from 
every form of prophetic consciousness than this, 
that, whereas the prophets looked forward to the 
coming of another, what Jesus saw as the final 
and glorious consummation of God's purposes was 
his own coming again" 2 as the Son of man in 
glory. 

9. A study of the self-knowledge of Jesus reveals 
the fact that he was acutely conscious (more and 
more clearly revealing it toward the close of his ca- 
reer) that he was to be the Redeemer of the race by 

1 Fairbairn, "Place of Christ in Modern Theology," page 364. 
2 Denny, "Jesus and the Gospel," page 297. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 131 

dying for it and that this giving of himself would 
mean a ransom for many. 1 

The conviction of Jesus that in filling his divine 
vocation he is to meet suffering and death is hardly 
to be called a matter of consciousness. Jesus, indeed, 
conceives that the Messianic calling involves the 
death and resurrection of the Messiah, and he sets 
his face resolutely toward that baptism wherewith he 
is to be baptized. Again and again during the last 
months of his life does he tell his disciples that the 
Son of Man must die and after three days rise again. 
"This kingdom is not what you think," he says. 
"The Son of Man must suffer many things, be re- 
jected and put to death." All this is plainly seen to 
be in the thought of Jesus, more and more clearly 
revealed toward the end of his life; but it is in the 
nature of prophetic insight into God's plan rather 
than that self-knowledge which makes consciousness. 
But when he begins to show that his death will have 
a vital and transcendent relation to every man and to 
the whole race, we find again the marks of that 
unique consciousness which sets Jesus apart from 
all men. The whole incident of the confession at 
Csesarea Fhilippi betrays this element in his thought. 
His death bulks in his own thought just as large as 
in the thought of the primitive Church. "The king- 
dom is dependent upon the King and in some divine- 
ly necessary way upon a King who dies for it. This 
is the mind of the primitive Church, the character- 

2 Mark viii. 27-33, ix. 31. *. 33-45- 



132 Witnesses to the Word. 

istic attitude of Christian faith, but it is also the 
mind of Jesus." 1 

10. There is one phase of the self-revelation of 
Jesus that is not limited to any one incident or word, 
but rather strikes us as we view his character as a 
whole. He escapes those limitations that arise from 
time and place. He belongs neither to the century 
in which he lived nor to the land where he was 
born. The race has neither left him behind as it 
traveled, nor has he been found out of date in the 
march of progress. He does not belong to the dead 
languages nor to the dead peoples, but always with 
the living, and always does he show himself alive by 
many infallible proofs. He is universal and time- 
less. Goldwin Smith says : "There are many pecul- 
iarities arising out of personal and historical cir- 
cumstances which are incident to the best human 
characters and which would prevent any one of them 
from being universal o*r final as a type. But the 
type set up in the Gospels as the Christian type seems 
to have escaped all these peculiarities and to stand 
out in unapproached purity as well as in unap- 
proached perfection of moral excellence. ... If 
that type of character was constructed by human 
intellect, we must at least bear in mind that it was 
constructed at the confluence of three races — the 
Jewish, the Greek, and the Roman — each of which 
had strong national peculiarities of its own. A sin- 
gle touch, a single taint of any of these peculiarities, 

1 Denny, "J esus and the Gospel," page 331. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 133 

and the character would have been national, not 
universal; transient, not eternal. It might have 
been the highest character in history, but it would 
have been disqualified for being the ideal. Suppos- 
ing it to have been human, whether it were the real 
effort of a man to attain moral excellence or a mor- 
al imagination of the writers of the Gospels, the 
chances surely were infinite against its escaping any 
tincture of the fanaticism, formalism, and exclusive- 
ness of the Jews, of the political pride of the Roman, 
and of the intellectual pride of the Greek. Yet it 
escaped them all. It is the essence of man's moral 
nature, clothed with a personality so vivid and in- 
tense as to excite through all ages the most intense 
affection, yet divested of all those peculiar charac- 
teristics, the accidentals of time and place, by which 
human personalities are marked." 1 

The character of Jesus has been before the world 
for nineteen hundred years. This portrait remains 
the masterpiece without a rival. He is first in the 
sense of having no second. Dr. Deissmann says: 
"Jesus stands out as the One and Paul as the first 
after the One; or, to speak more like Paul himself, 
as the first in the One." 2 Renan says : "The mem- 
ory of Him has been like the perfume of another 

1 Quoted by Bishop Candler in "Christus Auctor," pages 47, 

2 Deissmann, "Paulus," page 1. "Aus erscheint Jesus als der 
Eine, und Paulus als der Erste nach dem Eine, oder paulin- 
ischer gesprochen als der Erste in dem Eine." 



134 Witnesses to the Word. 

world, and all history is incomprehensible without 
Him." "In Him is condensed all that is good and 
exalted in our nature." To which Strauss adds: 
"In every respect Jesus stands in the first line of 
those who have developed the ideal of humanity." 
John Stuart Mill says : "When this preeminent Gen- 
ius is combined with the qualities of probably the 
greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission 
who ever existed upon the earth, religion cannot be 
said to have made a bad choice in pitching upon this 
Man as the ideal representative and guide of human- 
ity ; nor even now would it be easy for an unbeliever 
to find a better translation of the rule of virtue than 
to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our 
life." Lecky says: "It was reserved for Christianity 
to present to the world an ideal character which 
through all the changes of eighteen centuries has 
inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love ; 
has shown itself capable of acting on all nations, 
ages, temperaments, and conditions; has not only 
been the highest pattern of virtue, but the strongest 
incentive to its practice; and has exercised so deep 
an influence that it may be truly said that the simple 
record of three short years of active life has done 
more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the 
disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations 
of moralists." 1 

1 Quoted from Renan, Strauss, Lecky, and John Stuart Mill 
in "Christus Auctor" (Bishop Candler), Chapter IV., on "Has 
God Appeared among Men?" 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 135 

With an unaffected majesty and an unstudied 
spiritual grace this Jesus walks along the awful ele- 
vations of a divine perfection. His way leads him 
through poverty and scorn, agony and death; but 
he never slips nor falters, he never falls below his 
sublime claims. In the odd moments and ofT-hand 
relations, as well as in the dramatic crises of his life, 
always he bears himself in the same way — it is the 
one consistent Jesus. This is the character of Jesus 
as presented in the Gospels. The portrait is not 
drawn by description. There are no efforts to eulo- 
gize. There is no string of epithets. There is not 
the slightest trace of dramatic art or o'f literary skill. 
The character is allowed to act for himself, think 
for himself, speak for himself, and make his own 
impression. He stands sharply drawn, easily recog- 
nized in all the documents, with no one like him, 
having his own unmistakable touch and tone, and 
speaking in each circumstance and situation words 
that are not only appropriate to his character, but 
words to which there is nothing else in the Gospels 
that bears the least resemblance. 

Is this picture real or imaginary? To say that I 
can feel the reality of it may be satisfactory to me 
and the highest kind of evidence, but to a man who 
says that he cannot so feel I must have something 
else to say. There is little need to argue that the 
character of Jesus as presented in the Gospels is di- 
vine. His immediate followers so read him. He as- 
sumes everywhere the divine attitude toward them 



136 Witnesses to the Word. 

and demands of them the correspondent human atti- 
tude toward himself. But is it a real character? 

If this character of Jesus is not real, it must be 
either a literary creation, or it must be mythical, or 
it must be legendary. 

Few believe now that this portrait is a literary 
creation. To say this would be to say that an ob- 
scure Palestinian Jew could create a character that 
has no parallel in history or literature and cause to 
flow from his lips the world's greatest wisdom and 
to issue from his life its greatest moral inspirations. 
It is to say that this fictitious hero of a religious 
drama stepped off the stage into the arena of history 
and has swayed the world for nineteen hundred 
years as neither Caesar nor Napoleon has ever done. 
But this assumption is involved in vastly more diffi- 
cult implications. There is not one Gospel, but four ; 
there are not four Christs, but one. Four such 
writers must be supposed, and, indeed, four writers 
who did not collaborate to form this character. The 
still unsolved synoptic problem is proof that these 
four Gospels were not written in collaboration. The 
divergences are too serious and unstudied. Nor 
could four men working independently of each other 
ever have produced this character consistent and the 
same in speech, action, claim, and consciousness 
through all the Gospel records. The more the docu- 
ments are subdivided, the more impossible becomes 
the theory of a literary creation. 

Is it mythical ? Myths are born under the sway of 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 137 

the morning star in the twilight hour of a civiliza- 
tion. They belong to the infancy of a race or na- 
tion and precede its written history and even its 
trustworthy tradition. They are not completed at 
once, but grow under the touch of poetic fancy 
as vagrant as the winds, without local habitation. 
Claiming no literary parentage, they are dateless 
and carry no credentials. They belong to the race 
among which they originate and reflect its character- 
istics. Isis and Osiris are Egyptian in every essence ; 
and the same can be said of the myths of the Hin- 
dus, Greeks, Scandinavians, and Orientals. They 
are exaggerations of men or animals, personifica- 
tions of the forces of nature, and are the answer of 
the religious and poetic faculties to the questions of 
primitive philosophy. Hence they are fantastic, gro- 
tesque, and often monstrous. 1 

How different from all this sounds the story of 
Jesus of Nazareth ! The divine mystery of his birth 
results not in any dehumanized or abnormal curios- 
ity, but in a divine Child whose whole childhood is 
thrown into a few sentences O'f chaste and reserved 
speech. 2 Augustus is emperor at Rome. Cyrenius 
is governor in Syria. Herod is king in Judea. His 
parents live in Nazareth, but he is born at Bethle- 
hem at the time of the great census. The towns in 

1 Bishop Haygood, "Man of Galilee," chapter on "Jesus and 
Myths." See also article on "Mythology" in any good encyclo- 
pedia. 

2 Luke ii. 42-52. 



138 Witnesses to the Word. 

which he preached, the localities he visited, the wells 
from which he drank, the houses where he stopped, 
the names of his converts, the political and theolog- 
ical parties of the day, and many other circumstan- 
tial details are easily woven into the story, and not 
one of them has ever been historically discredited. 
The story moves in deep seriousness and culminates 
in the passion of the cross and the glory of the res- 
urrection. The whole is suffused with moral pas- 
sion, and the spiritual motive dominates all. The 
character of Jesus is everywhere sustained as the 
Son of man, intensely human, yet not mere man. 
Indefinable such a character truly is and as full of 
mystery as it is of majesty, but it is undeniably 
drawn in the Gospels. This is not mythology, and no 
attempt to make it so deserves serious consideration. 

Is the Jesus of the New Testament a legend ? Did 
the memory of a real Jesus, Prophet, and Master 
become embellished by legendary additions until it 
resulted in the Jesus of the New Testament? Are 
the stories of his divine origin, transcendent claims, 
miraculous works, mysterious death, and reported 
resurrection but examples of the legend-making ac- 
tivity of the early disciples? 

The Jesus of the New Testament is the Jesus of 
the Church. This Jesus makes transcendent de- 
mands on human faith and conscience. His very 
presence in the world forbids the philosophy of nat- 
uralism, and there is no room in the world of nat- 
uralism for such a being as Jesus. When the nat- 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 139 

uralist refuses to reconstruct his world so as to take 
Jesus in, naturally he seeks to reconstruct the New 
Testament so as to leave him out. It is neither crit- 
ical nor historical nor scientific to study the New 
Testament with the assumption' that the supernatural 
is the sure sign of the legend and cannot belong to 
the real history. With this bias as a beginning, a 
critical operation is brought to bear on the docu- 
ments of the early Church, and sections and chap- 
ters are mutilated or amputated on grounds that 
pretend to be critical, but are really prejudicial. 

The question is simply this: Are the Gospels a 
mere collection of legends springing up in that twi- 
light zone between the death of Jesus and the begin- 
ning of historical Christianity? Is the Jesus they 
present a legendary character? The naturalistic 
critics say, "Yes"; and they undertake to gather 
from the literary wreckage the "actual history" and 
to reconstruct the "real Jesus." But the "actual 
history" will not stay settled, and the so-called "real 
Jesus" cannot get himself believed in by more than 
one critic at a time. 

But let us look the question fairly in the face. Is 
Christianity founded on legends, Palestinian, Gilga- 
mesch, or any other sort? To this it may be an- 
swered : 

1. There is not a trace of documentary or monu- 
mental evidence to discredit the Gospel records. 
There is a line of external evidence running back 
through the Church fathers that establishes the Gos- 



140 Witnesses to the Word. 

pels in the faith of the Church as authentic and reli- 
able records of our Lord's life and of the origins of 
Christianity. This chain of evidence has never been 
broken. 1 

2. The early dates which are now being given by 
the greatest scholars to the New Testament writings 
leave an extremely narrow margin for a so-called 
twilight zone where legends might find room to rise 
and spread. They must rise, and they must spread. 
People must not only believe them, but they must 
believe that they have been believed from the begin- 
ning. When we see practically all the Pauline epis- 
tles given back to him by a criticism which in the 
words of Harnack "is in a movement backward 
toward tradition" ; when we hear the same brilliant 
scholar say, "In the years 30-70 and, indeed, in Pal- 
estine, more exactly in Jerusalem, everything really 
came into being and happened, of which what fol- 
lowed was simply the unfolding"; when the tradi- 
tion-forming period is over and the writings of Gos- 
pel history begins not later than 65-70 A.D., we 
find that the time is too short for his followers to 
forget who and what he was and to come to> believe 
that he was the transcendent and divine Person of 
the Gospel records and to believe that they have 
believed this from the beginning. There is no* trace 
of a clash between the memory of a so-called "real" 
or "pre-Christian" Jesus and the Christ of Gospel 

x See preceding chapter. 



The Witness of Jesus to the Bible. 141 

faith, and multitudes of those who had seen and 
known him were still alive when Luke began to sift 
the stories of his life and Paul to write letters to the 
early Church. 

3. Paul we know, and his letters are with us to 
this day. The Christ of the Epistles is the Christ of 
the Gospels. The one is historical and witnesses that 
the other is real. Paul was instructed by the imme- 
diate followers of our Lord. He covered the very 
ground where the passion and resurrection took 
place. He was in close reach of all the facts. The 
call he heard was a call to suffer great things, and 
yet he turns from his brilliant and promising place 
as a leader of the Pharisees and becomes the perse- 
cuted apostle of the despised faith. Here is a man 
of brilliant mind, finished education, and intense 
convictions. He smashes the plans of a lifetime to 
get his feet on reality. He follows the truth as he 
sees it — to Rome and to the block. Where is the 
room for the myth-makers and legend-mongers 
when such a man as Paul shakes hands with Simon, 
who stood in the empty tomb? 

4. How did mere legends come to form the New 
Testament, and how did a book so formed come to 
sway the world? How did the secret of writing 
such literature become one of the lost arts, so that 
the Church has never produced anything in the least 
like it from that day to this? Plow did stray leg- 
ends come to form the face of Jesus, that Form di- 
vine, that Character consistent, sustained, transcend- 



142 Witnesses to the Word. 

ent, which is the greatest miracle recorded in the 
Gospels and which any man can see for himself if 
he will but read and understand what he reads? 
"All attempts to resolve him into a myth, a legend, 
an air — and hundreds of such attempts have been 
made — have drifted over the enduring reality of his 
character and left not a rack behind. The result of 
all criticism, the final verdict of enlightened common 
sense, is that Christ is historical. He is such a Per- 
son as men could not have imagined if they would 
and would not have imagined if they could. He is 
neither Greek myth nor Hebrew legend. The artist 
capable of fashioning him did not exist, nor could 
he have found the materials. A nonexistent Chris- 
tianity did not spring out of the air and create a 
Christ. A real Christ appeared in the world and 
created Christianity." 1 

1 Van Dyke, "Gospel for an Age of Doubt," page 59. 



CHAPTER VI. 
The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 

BELIEF in the physical resurrection of Jesus 
was not a late aftergrowth in the Christian 
Church. Faith in the risen Lord was the foundation 
of Christianity, and it was this faith which created 
the Church. No one can seriously doubt that the 
apostles themselves believed in the reality of the 
resurrection. Baur, Strauss, and Renan held this to 
be unassailable and sought to account for this faith 
on some rationalistic basis. In the words of Strauss, 
"The apostles firmly believed that Jesus had arisen." 
Faith in the resurrection is the base line that runs 
through the entire New Testament. There are six 
explicit accounts of it by five different authors and 
over one hundred references to it. It is everywhere 
viewed in the same light. It is the foundation of 
the faith, the basis of doctrinal teaching, the sub- 
ject of apostolic testimony, and the ground of the 
believer's hope. It is thus expounded or referred to 
in the Gospels, the Acts, Romans, i and 2 Corinthi- 
ans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 
i Thessalonians, 2 Timothy, Hebrews, 1 Peter, and 
Revelation. 

(143) 



144 Witnesses to the Word. 

This base line binds together the four great divi- 
sions of the New Testament, the Gospels, the Acts, 
the Epistles, and Revelation, just as the Messianic 
thread binds into one the three divisions of the Old 
Testament. -The fact is no sooner believed than it is 
enmeshed in history and interwoven in correspond- 
ence. No better evidence of its historical character 
could possibly be conceived. If it had first been 
heard of some generations after its supposed date, 
it might be called a "late aftergrowth." But this 
faith goes to making history at once ; and the prim- 
itive Church is ready with a historical book written 
in the lifetime of Christ's contemporaries, which 
takes the thread of Christian history from the death 
of Judas to the planting of the gospel in Rome. 
The literature of the Church is enriched in the same 
generation with a wealth of correspondence which 
glows with faith in the risen Lord. It is easily seen 
from this that not merely do these divisions of the 
New Testament support the resurrection, but the 
resurrection faith binds them into a unity in which 
each finds support and strength. 

The apostles held their apostleship as a call to bear 
witness to the resurrection. A successor to Judas 
must be chosen, that he might "be a witness with us 
of His resurrection." 1 Peter says with transforming 
passion in his Pentecostal sermon : "This Jesus hath 
God raised up, whereof we are all witnesses." 5 On 

a Acts i. 21, 22. 2 Acts ii. 32. 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 145 

Mars Hill Paul preaches "J esus and the resurrec- 
tion; 1 and he bases his whole apostolic doctrine on 
this as he says: "If Christ be not risen, then is our 
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." ! He 
says again: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth 
the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that 
God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be 
saved." 3 The sacrifice of all things is counted as 
nothing, that he may know Christ and the power of 
his resurrection. 4 

Not only is there direct testimony to the resurrec- 
tion, but there is also indirect evidence of a striking 
and convincing character and circumstantial evi- 
dence of the strongest kind to corroborate and illu- 
mine all the rest. 

I. The direct testimony rests on the authority of 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. Matthew 
tells us that as it began to dawn toward the first day 
of the week Mary Magdalene and the other Mary 
(the mother of James) came to see the sepulcher and 
found the stone rolled away and sitting on it an 
angel whose face was like lightning and whose 
raiment was as white as snow. They were told by 
the angel that Jesus had risen and were charged to 
go at once and announce to the disciples that the 
Master would wait for them in Galilee. As they 
went to carry this message Jesus met them, saying, 

1 Acts xvii. 18. 2 i Corinthians xv. 14. 3 Romans x. 9. 
4 Philippians iii. 8-10. 
10 



146 Witnesses to the Word. 

"All hail," suffered them to worship him and take 
hold of his feet, and repeated the charge about the 
Galilean meeting place. Matthew completes his ac- 
count by telling how the guards reported to the chief 
priests that the tomb was empty and how the sol- 
diers were bribed to say, "His disciples came by 
night and stole him away while we slept." 

The second Gospel is really Peter's Gospel, from 
whom Mark is said to have received his information. 
Mark tells us that Mary Magdalene, Mary (the 
mother of James), and Salome came with anointing 
spices, reaching the tomb after the sun had risen and 
the Sabbath had passed. As they drew near they 
were saying, "Who shall roll away the stone for 
us?" and, looking up, they saw that the stone, ex- 
ceeding great in size, was rolled back. Sitting on 
it was a young man arrayed in white, who said: 
"Be not amazed: ye seek Jesus. . . . He is risen; 
he is not here. . . . Go, tell his disciples and Pe- 
ter, He goeth before you into Galilee." In trembling 
and astonishment they fled from the tomb, speaking 
to no one as they went, for they were afraid. With 
this statement the Gospel of Mark is supposed to 
come to an abrupt close. The American Revised 
Bible says in a footnote: "The two oldest Greek 
manuscripts and some other authorities omit from 
verse nine to the end." Hastings's "Bible Diction- 
ary" says : "The probability, therefore, is that these 
last twelve verses did not belong to the original form 
of the Gospel." So, then, either the original Mark 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 147 

had a conclusion which gave a fuller account of the 
resurrection, or else it did not suit the writer's pur- 
pose to make more than a brief reference to the great 
event that was filling all the thought and faith of the 
Christian community. 1 

Luke gives in his Gospel a full account of the 
resurrection; and in his second book, the Acts, he 
alludes to it seventeen times. Luke's importance as 
a witness and reliability as a historian has been bril- 
liantly advocated in late years by Prof. W. M. Ram- 
say, who was once a disciple of the Tubingen 
school. Luke's authorship of the third Gospel and 
of the Acts has likewise been advocated on the con- 
tinent by Professor Harnack, and thus once again 
one of the "settled results" of criticism has been 
reviewed in the light of new facts. 

"The Acts of the Apostles in the multiplicity and 
variety of its details probably affords greater means 
of testing its general character for truth than any 
other ancient narrative in existence; and, in my 
mind, it satisfies the tests fully."' This is the book 
with seventeen references to Christ's resurrection, the 
book in which the apostolate becomes conscious of 
itself and feels that its mission is to bear witness to 
the resurrection, and the book whose preachers all 

x Hastings, "Bible Dictionary," Volume III., article on 
"Mark's Gospel." See also Dr. Alexander's discussion in "Son 
of Man," page 339. 

2 Lightfoot on "Galatians." Quoted by Dr. Alexander in 
"Son of Man." 



148 Witnesses to the Word. 

preach "Jesus and the resurrection." This is the 
writer who gave us the third Gospel and whose 
histories are written in the true historical spirit. 
"As far as can be tested, he is correct in fixing the 
dates, stating the facts, and collocating the events of 
contemporary history." 1 That he is a careful and 
conscientious writer is sufficiently shown in his pref- 
ace, which has been admired by scholars of all 
schools and ages. In a dignified and straightfor- 
ward manner he sets forth his reasons for writing, 
his sources of information, and his method of sift- 
ing and shaping his material. He does not claim to 
have been an eyewitness, but to have gotten his ma- 
terial from those who were the original eyewitnesses 
and ministers of the Word. He declares that he 
commits his record to writing, that in the midst 
of many oral and written accounts his friend and 
disciple, Theophilus, might have certain knowledge 
of gospel truth. He says that he had been careful 
to trace the course of things — to trace the course of 
things from the first, to trace the course of all things 
from the first, to trace the course of all things accu- 
rately from the first. 2 Luke is a trained writer with 
the instincts of the historian, and his writings have 
been in a marked degree "verifiable and verified by 
many and minute tests." He bears direct testimony 
to the resurrection in the latter part of his Gospel. 
He says that on the first day of the week at early 

1 Alexander, "Son of Man," page 333. 2 Ibid., pages 28, 29. 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 149 

dawn Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James) , 
Joanna, and the other women came to the tomb 
and found the stone rolled away. Entering in, they 
found, not the body of Jesus, but two men in daz- 
zling apparel, who stood by them and said, "Why 
seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, 
but is risen," etc. 1 Returning from the tomb, they 
told these things to the eleven and the rest. Luke 
further records that Jesus appeared in person to> the 
two disciples on the way to Emmaus and later to 
the eleven in Jerusalem and to them that were with 
them. It is seen that Luke omits other appearances 
known to us from the other Gospels. It cannot be 
argued from this that he was ignorant o*f them ; for 
he tells us in the Acts that Jesus "showed himself 
alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing 
unto them by the space of forty days," 2 

John tells us that Mary Magdalene came on the 
the first day of the week while it was yet dark and 
found that the stone had been taken away from the 
tomb. She runs and finds Peter and John and an- 
nounces : "They have taken away the Lord out of 
the tomb, and we know not where they laid him." 
Peter and John then find for themselves that the 
tomb is empty, but as yet know not the scripture, 
that he must rise again. Mary, still lingering, sees 
two angels in white sitting one at the head and the 
other at the feet where the body of Jesus had lain. 

1 Luke xxiv. 5-7. 2 Acts i. 3. 



150 Witnesses to the Word. 

They say to her, ''Woman, why weepest thou?" and 
she repeats what she had said to Peter and John. 
Then Jesus appeared to her, calling her by name and 
sending her to tell the disciples ; and she went, say- 
ing: "I have seen the Lord." Jesus then appeared 
that evening to the disciples as they sat behind closed 
doors with Thomas absent. After eisrht davs thev 
were gathered again behind closed doors with 
Thomas present; and Jesus appeared, saying to 
Thomas : "Reach hither thv finder and thy hand." 
Then to the seven by the Sea of Galilee he came and 
said to Simon three times: "Lovest thou me?'' 
John concludes by saying: "Many other signs did 
Jesus therefore in the presence of the disciples which 
are not written in this book." 

W't come now to the remaining witness, Paul, 
whose testimony is critical and convincing. Pauline 
Christianity is historical — the larger part of his 
writings were not denied him even by Baur — and no 
one has yet been able to drive a wedge between the 
Christianity of Paul and the Christianity of the 
Gospels. Paul gives the following summary of our 
Lord's appearances in 1 Corinthians xv. 3-8: "For 
I delivered unto you first of all that which I also 
received, how that Christ died for our sins according 
to the scriptures ; and that he was buried, and that 
he rose again the third day according to the scrip- 
tures: and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the 
twelve. After that, he was seen of above five hun- 
dred brethren at once ; of whom the greater part re- 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 151 

main unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. 
After that, he was seen of James; then of all the 
apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, 
as of one born out of due time." Here Paul assures 
us that Jesus had been seen alive after his crucifixion 
by above five hundred believers and that most of 
these original eyewitnesses were alive at the time of 
his writing and could be questioned if his readers 
were so disposed. Paul himself came into immedi- 
ate contact with immediate disciples of our Lord, 
notably Simon Peter and James, the Lord's brother. 
In verse eight Paul claims to have seen the Lord 
with his own eyes in such a real and literal fashion 
that it constituted the last of our Lord's appearances 
and is thus to be sharply distinguished from the 
mere visions that came to him afterwards. 1 In 1 
Corinthians ix. 1 he lays this experience by the side 
of John's or Peter's testimony and claims that he 
had the same basis for his apostleship as they had, 
for he too had seen the Lord. It was the fact that 
he had seen the Lord that changed the cruel and 
conscientious bigot and the self-righteous Pharisee 
into the passionate lover of Jesus and the untiring 
apostle of the righteousness which is by faith and 
of the love that never faileth. Every outlook in 
life, every inducement of fortune, and every quality 
of mind and heart impelled him to reject the new 
faith until he became convinced that beneath it was 

x Acts xviii. 9. 



152 Witnesses to the Word. 

the bedrock of reality. This reality was to him the 
resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 

Lord Lyttelton considered that "the conversion and 
apostleship of St. Paul alone, duly considered, was 
of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Chris- 
tianity to be a divine revelation." We are told in 
"The Fundamentals'' 1 how Lord Lyttelton came to 
write his masterly treatise on "The Conversion of 
St. Paul" : 'The eighteenth century was the darkest 
period religiously in the history of England since the 
time of the Reformation. It was the age of the 
great deists, agnostics, rationalists, and unbelievers, 
when 'all men of rank are [were] thought to be in- 
fidels.' Like so many of the literary men of his 
time, George Lyttelton and his friend, Gilbert West, 
were led at first to reject the Christian religion. On 
the Sabbath forenoon before he died, in an inter- 
view with Dr. Johnson, Lyttelton said : 'When I 
first set out in the world, I had friends who endeav- 
ored to shake my belief in the Christian religion. I 
saw difficulties which staggered me/ etc. In his 
biography of Lord Lyttelton Dr. Johnson adds: 
'He had, in the pride of juvenile confidence, with 
the help of corrupt conversation, entertained doubts 
of the truth of Christianity.' His intimacy with 
Bolingbroke, Chesterfield. Pope, and others of the 
same kind had no doubt influenced him in this di- 
rection. Rev. T. T. Biddolph tells us that both 

1 "The Fundamentals," Volume V., page 107. 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 153 

Lyttelton and West, men of acknowledged talents, 
had imbibed the principles of infidelity. . . . 
Fully persuaded that the Bible was an imposture, 
they were determined to expose the cheat. Lord 
Lyttelton chose the conversion of Paul and Mr. 
West the resurrection of Christ for the subject of 
hostile criticism. Both sat down to their respective 
tasks full of prejudice, but the result of their sepa- 
rate attempts was that they were both converted by 
their efforts to overthrow the truth of Christianity. 
They came together, not as they expected, to exult 
over an imposture exposed to ridicule, but to lament 
over their own folly and to felicitate each other on 
their joint conviction that the Bible was the word o>f 
God. Their able inquiries have furnished two of 
the most valuable treatises in favor of revelation, 
one entitled 'Observations on the Conversion of St. 
Paul' and the other 'Observations on the Resurrec- 
tion of Christ/ " 

Four of these witnesses — Matthew, Mark, Luke, 
and John — relate stories of the resurrection which 
are more or less parallel and can, therefore, be com- 
pared. A close study of these four accounts of what 
took place at the tomb on that memorable first day 
of the week will furnish some interesting results, 
which may be summarized in the following table : 



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The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 155 

It will be seen from this table that there are minor 
differences on practically every point except that the 
stone was rolled away and that the tomb was empty. 
John mentions Mary Magdalene. Matthew says 
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. Mark has 
Mary Magdalene, Mary (the mother of James), and 
Salome. Luke mentions Mary Magdalene, Mary 
(the mother of James), Joanna, and the other wom- 
en. Thus are mentioned one woman, two women, 
three women, and three with an indefinite "the other 
women" in the respective narratives. As to time, 
John says, "While it was yet dark" ; Matthew, "As 
it began to dawn"; Luke, "At early dawn"; while 
Mark says, "When the sun was risen." As to events 
in the natural realm, Matthew says that there was 
"a great earthquake, and an angel rolled the stone 
away"; while the other three simply say that "the 
stone was rolled away," or words to that effect. 
Matthew says that an angel was seen; John says 
that two angels were seen ; Mark simply says that a 
young man in white appeared and spoke to the 
women ; while Luke says that two men in dazzling 
apparel were seen. The recorded sayings of the 
angel or angels do not differ much, except that some 
are longer than others. The message is the same : 
"He is not here; he is risen. Go, tell his disci- 
ples." We note that Jesus says to Mary, "Touch 
me not," in John ; while Matthew says that the two 
Marys "took hold of his feet and worshiped him." 

Such a survey demonstrates that we have here 



156 Witnesses to the Word. 

four separate and independent accounts. Such nar- 
ratives could neither have been manufactured in 
collusion nor could they have been derived from one 
another. The differences are too marked and too 
many, and they lie on the surface. The harmony is 
at the heart and must be studied out. Had the stories 
been manufactured in collusion, the harmony would 
be on the surface, and the discrepancies would come 
out under the cross-examination. The harmony and 
the differences are precisely such as would be ex- 
pected when four separate and independent witness- 
es report on one and the same stupendous event. 

Such stories could not have been fabricated inde- 
pendently of one another. The agreements are too 
numerous and fundamental. Separate and inde- 
pendent forgers reciting what never occurred could 
never have attained the fundamental harmony of 
events, atmosphere, and emotion that pervades these 
narratives. Even more apparent is the truth that 
four confederates in literary crime did not and could 
not have fabricated these stories in collusion with 
one another. They would never have left all over 
the face of the narrative such differences as we can- 
not in our present knowledge (or ignorance) fully 
reconcile. Such differences are the assets rather 
than the liabilities of our faith, and we should thank 
God for them. They testify to the unstudied truth- 
fulness of the writers. They are such as fuller 
knowledge would clear away, and this fuller knowl- 
edge the early Church doubtless possessed; and so 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 157 

these accounts were put side by side with not so 
much as the slightest attempt to explain away the 
discrepancies. The oral tradition must have been 
so prevalent and so ample that no one of the writers 
felt called on to make a complete table of what took 
place on that first Easter morning. What was said 
would be read in the light of what was left unsaid 
and its special purpose be understood. John explic- 
itly tells us that the Christian community knew vast- 
ly more of the events of Christ's life, death, and 
resurrection than any one (or all) of the Gospels 
has preserved in writing*. John records Jesus as 
saying to Mary, "Touch me not," when he must 
have known that Matthew had said : "They took hold 
of his feet and worshiped him." John, the eyewit- 
ness, with full knowledge of all these things and 
with the other Gospels doubtless f.nished and in his 
hands when he wrote, is unconscious that any prob- 
lem has been made for faith. 

The careful reader will not fail to note how these 
accounts are given in a straightforward and artless 
manner. Events that are supernatural are told with 
a simplicity and a naturalness that belong to eyewit- 
nesses of the truth. There is no setting of a stage as 
in the drama, no coloring of the picture as in fiction, 
no eulogies or exclamations of wonder, no mysticism 
of the religious fanatic, no vision as of the spiritual 
genius. All breathes the sober air of fact and the 
manner of eyewitnesses telling the truth. 

II. There is a very impressive indirect testimony 



158 Witnesses to the Word. 

that arises from a study of certain words, phrases, 
and details incidentally used. 

1. Jesus is reported to have appeared to his fol- 
lowers only ; never to Pilate nor to Herod nor to the 
Sanhedrin. The reason does not appear on the sur- 
face. It seems at first glance to discount the Gospel 
that no enemy or disbeliever had this conclusive 
evidence thrust upon him. Surely no forger would 
willingly risk such an embarrassment to a manufac- 
tured narrative. But so it happened, and the wit- 
nesses tell it simply because it is the truth. The 
same may be said about the statements that Jesus 
was not at first recognized by his disciples. The fact 
is told simply because it is true. The reason is left 
to be inferred. 

2. John reports that Jesus said to Mary : "Touch 
me not/' YVe cannot be sure that we know to this 
day why he said this. What possible motive could 
there be to put such a remark in the record unless it 
belonged to the true event ? But this is what Jesus 
said, what Mary heard, what Mary reported, and, 
therefore, John writes it down. 

3. The appearances of Jesus are occasional and 
startling. He is no more the old familiar Master 
on whose bosom John leaned and with whom they 
walked and supped. Jesus must have had his reason 
for this; and the disciples may or may not have 
realized it, but they record it so because it happened 
so. It is hardly what one would have expected and 
not at all like what a forger would have fabricated. 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 159 

4. Another instance is found in John xx. 3-5 : 
"Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, 
and came to the sepulcher. So they ran both to- 
gether : and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and 
came first to the sepulcher. And he stooping down, 
and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying." How 
much this is like what we know of these two men! 
John is younger and outruns the other. Reverent 
and thoughtful, he stoops and looks in without en- 
tering the solemn place. Peter, the older, runs more 
slowly ; but, once arriving at the tomb, his bold heart 
pushes him on to the impulsive act. He enters the 
tomb and looks around. John then follows, and 
both become convinced that the tomb is empty. 
Similar to this is the story told in John xxi. 7, 
where the Lord is seen on the shore. John is quick 
to perceive that it is the Lord, but it is Peter who is 
quick to act. "He girt his fisher's coat unto him, ( for 
he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea,." 

5. Singularly beautiful and convincing is the pas- 
sage in Mark xvi. 7 : "But go your way, tell his 
disciples and Peter, that he goeth before you into 
Galilee : there shall ye see him." Peter had denied 
his Lord, and his own conscience would cut him out 
of any message sent simply to the disciples. How 
true to Peter's need, to the whole Gospel story, to 
the whole character of our Lord is this single phrase 
bending beneath its weight of love not only for 
heartbroken Peter, but for penitent backsliders of 
all ages ! Another character scene is the way Jesus 



160 Witnesses to the Word. 

convinces his unbelieving disciple Thomas. This is 
found in John xx. 26-29: "And after eight days 
again his disciples were within, and Thomas with 
them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and 
stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. 
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, 
and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, 
and thrust it into my side : and be not faithless, but 
believing. And Thomas answered and said unto 
him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto him, 
Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast be- 
lieved : blessed are they that have not seen, and yet 
have believed." These stories are artlessly told, are 
perfectly characteristic, and should convince any one 
of the truthfulness of the narrative. 

5. But the most unapproachable in beauty and 
simplicity is the scene in the garden where Mary, 
weeping, asks the gardener where he has laid the 
body o-f the Lord. She has seen Jesus and has heard 
him speak, but she still mistakes him for the garden- 
er. He says just one word, the word and the tone 
he used when he led her from the thralldom of the 
seven devils into the life of love. Her eyes were 
opened in an instant, and she fell at his feet and 
cried, "Rabboni" ("my Master"). Is this reality 
or fiction? This is Jesus; this is Mary; this is life. 

6. Take once more the passage in John xx. 7. 
John and Peter see "the napkin, that was about his 
head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped 
together in a place by itself." Why the writer 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 161 

should take such pains over this small and seemingly 
irrelevant detail has puzzled many. He makes no 
attempt to explain; he simply relates what he saw 
with his own eyes. But may it not be, after all, 
exceedingly relevant and significant of the Master's 
manner? This narrow house has been his tomb. 
The breath of God has swept "through the sleeping 
and silent clay." It is an awful moment and sublime 
to him and all the race. He will not leave his tomb 
in haste nor lose that majestic calm which he carried 
through all his life. What grave robbers would 
have dealt thus with the napkin and cloth, and what 
fiction writer would have thought or cared to put 
this in ? But an eyewitness would carry every aspect 
of that empty tomb stamped on his mind forever and 
could not fail to tell just what he had seen. 

III. Circumstantial evidence is that indirect and 
presumptive evidence that arises from the study of 
the proved or admitted facts in a case. Three main 
lines of circumstantial evidence combine to prove 
that Jesus rose from the dead. 

i. The first line of argument arises from the very 
existence of the Christian Church itself. It is evi- 
dent from the epistles of St. Paul that shortly after 
the crucifixion the little band of disciples was mar- 
velously augmented and that an "institution which 
we call the Church thus rises at once fair and strong 
out of the grave of Jesus." 1 The foundation of this 

a Bishop Candler, "Christus Auctor," page 92. 
II 



1 62 Witnesses to the Word. 

Church was the belief that Jesus had risen from the 
grave and ascended to the right hand of God the 
Father. Xo one can question that this was, from 
the beginning, the faith of primitive Christianity. 
The Church built on this faith had become in the 
time of Tacitus at Rome "a vast multitude" ; and a 
little later Pliny the Younger says to the Emperor 
Trajan: 'The contagion of this superstition has not 
merely pervaded the cities, but also all villages and 
country places." The Churches which burdened 
Paul with their daily care had become in the time of 
Tacitus a great host and, a generation later, an 
embarrassment to imperial paganism. Every one of 
them was built on the same foundation stone, the 
resurrection of Jesus. 

Even if the Gospel memoirs were written as late 
as the Tubingen critics claimed, it would not follow 
that the resurrection story was "a late aftergrowth" ; 
for it would still be true that it was belief in the res- 
urrection which created the Church and constituted 
everywhere its normative principle. A late date for 
the Gospels would only argue that the belief was late 
in taking literary form. The existence of the 
Church itself under the leadership of the apostles, 
with its councils, controversies, and missionary ac- 
tivities, is prime evidence that the faith was prior to 
the institution it created and to the memoirs which 
preserve it for the world. The moral wonder and 
glory of this early Church and its mighty rush 
through the Greek and Roman world have been the 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 163 

marvel of the historian in every age. The rational- 
ist who rejects its supernatural foundation feels 
called upon to explain its resistless sweep and its 
lifting power over the lives of men. 

The moral power and spiritual fascination which 
it possessed may have been due, as Gibbon said, to 
the zeal of the early Christians, to their doctrine of 
a future life, to the miraculous power ascribed to 
the primitive Church, to the pure and austere morals 
of the first Christians, or to the union and discipline 
of the Christian republic; but these are themselves 
effects and constitute the credentials of that faith in 
the risen Lord which could so suddenly and so last- 
ingly call them forth. 

The argument is essentially the same when Lecky 
seeks to explain the success of Christianity by its 
elements of power and attraction combined in it, by 
its freedom from local ties, by its strong appeal to 
the affections, by its pure and noble system of ethics, 
by its doctrines of the brotherhood of man and of 
the supreme sanctity of love, and by the congruity 
of its teachings with the spiritual nature of mankind. 
These things may go far toward explaining the suc- 
cess of Christianity, but they leave Christianity itself 
unaccounted for. It is not the success of the early 
Church that makes the point of this argument; but 
the existence of the Church itself, founded on faith 
in the resurrection and full of faith, good works, 
compassion, purity, zeal, and an unworldliness that 
"mocked the cross and flame." 



164 Witnesses to the Word. 

Such a Church, feeling itself firmly founded on 
an event which had only recently taken place and 
with the greater part of the original eyewitnesses 
still alive, furnishes us with circumstantial evidence 
of the highest validity. 

2. The second line of argument arises from the 
observance of the first day of the week as the Chris- 
tian Sabbath. The Jewish Sabbath was an ancient 
and highly honored institution. The early Church 
was composed of Jews, all of whom exceedingly 
revered the moral law of Moses and most of whom 
followed the ceremonial law as well. Yet we find 
in the Acts that this early Church assembled on the 
first day of the week, and the earliest Christian 
writings convey the same information. With no 
council called to decree it and no emperor to enforce 
it, led by the logic of its life, the Church observes 
as its day of rest the first day of the week. Some- 
thing took place on that day that constituted a new 
Sabbath for the Christian community, for on that 
day God rested again from his work of the new 
creation. The apostles tell us that this was the day 
on which Jesus rose from the dead, and this is the 
only reasonable explanation that has ever been of- 
fered or can be offered for this change. 

3. It is impossible to ignore the transformation 
that took place in the character of the apostles short- 
ly after the crucifixion. When Jesus was buried, 
the llitle band of disciples was completely stunned. 
The chief priests seemed to have feared his resur- 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 165 

rection, but there is not the slightest evidence that 
the disciples had hoped for it. When Peter and 
John had convinced themselves that the tomb was 
empty, they did not on that account conclude that he 
had risen, "for as yet they knew not the scripture, 
that he must rise again from the dead." It was 
after this that Jesus joined the two on the way to 
Emmaus and, as yet unknown to them, said : "What 
communications are these that ye have one with an- 
other, as ye walk? And they stood still, looking 
sad." This is after the tomb had been found vacant 
and after the angels had declared that Jesus had 
risen. They are still foolish and slow of heart to 
believe, not knowing the Scriptures. Jesus first 
opens to them the Scripture and shows them the 
atoning death and resurrection glory of Christ in the 
Word before he makes himself known. He opened 
the heart to believe before he challenged the eye to 
see. There must be a fitness to receive the evidence 
of the resurrection, and it was the prepared heart 
that caught the sign in the breaking of the bread. 

The grief of the women was disconsolate to the 
point of distraction. The men had come to the com- 
plete destruction of their hopes and bankruptcy of 
their faith. With them all love alone was left — 
love utterly loyal, though the lights of faith had 
gone out, and the song of hope had been hushed. 
Only love was left, and love was only a tomb in 
which hope had forever gone to sleep. The belief 
that Jesus had risen from the dead swept through 



1 66 Witnesses to the Word. 

that defeated company like the breath of God swept 
through the silent and sleeping Body in Joseph's 
tomb. The enthusiasm with which they bore witness 
to the resurrection, the zeal with which they walked 
in the new "way," the power to reproduce in their 
lives the qualities of their Master, the Christ passion 
that took possession of them, the fortitude with 
which they endured danger and persecution for his 
sake, and the well-nigh irresistible testimony which 
convinced thousands of others — all this enabled 
them to found a "new order, a new society of men, 
with new moral principles, new moral energies, new 
moral character, and a new moral influence, which 
from that beginning went on till it revolutionized 
the thought, the theology, and the moral conditions 
of the Roman Empire and of the world." 

This transformation in the disciples themselves is 
a fact of supreme importance as circumstantial evi- 
dence. It establishes beyond question the fact that 
the disciples themselves believed with absolute cer- 
tainty that Jesus had risen, and this became the con- 
suming conviction of their lives. The question now 
arises as to what is the reasonable explanation of 
this faith. The resurrection of Jesus completely sat- 
isfies the facts in the case, and nothing else will. 
The resurrection is indeed above reason and super- 
natural, but every other proposed explanation of the 
facts is unnatural and unreasonable. The fact of 

Alexander, "Son of Man," page 347. 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb. 167 

the resurrection is the only reasonable explanation; 
and it is the explanation given by the disciples them- 
selves, whose character and conduct commend their 
testimony. The testimony and circumstantial evi- 
dence combined make such a demonstration as no 
man can doubt, except on the basis of a priori preju- 
dice against the event in question. To argue the evi- 
dence is to admit the fact. To reject the fact is in 
effect to say that no amount of evidence can estab- 
lish such an event, which is really to say, "I would 
not believe it if I saw it with my own eyes" ; and this 
is to reject the evidence of the senses, the very basis 
of modern philosophy. Reason cuts its own throat 
when it refuses to consider reasonably the evidence 
for the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. 

How pitiful and paltry seem all the efforts of 
skepticism to satisfy the facts in the case and leave 
the miracle out! To say that Jesus did not really 
die but only swooned, was thought to be dead and 
afterwards revived, is to say that the divine Victim 
passed through the ordeal of Gethsemane, the trial 
with its scourging, the hours on the Roman cross, 
the stroke of the spear and a swoon that deceived 
the expert executioners, and, after all this, had life 
enough left in his body to survive entombment in a 
sealed tomb and strength enough to escape, though 
a great stone barred the door. Once escaped from 
the tomb, he would be in a pitiable plight, unable to 
plant an immortal hope in his followers or to inspire 
them with a more than mortal courage. He himself 



1 68 Witnesses to the Word. 

would know the resurrection tale to be a farce,, and 
no one can conceive of the Jesus of the Gospels be- 
ing a party to such a fraud nor of the apostolic faith 
being founded on such a farce. 

Renan attempted to satisfy the facts in the case 
by assuming that the so-called miracle originated 
with Mary. He says, ''The passion of a halluci- 
nated woman gives to the world a resurrected God'' 
— that is, Man- was in love with Jesus, and in the 
ecstasy of her lovelorn grief her overwrought 
nerves and fevered brain conceived hallucinations to 
be bodily appearances. But it is only necessary to 
add that it is as easy to believe that Jesus rose from 
the dead as to believe that Christianity- originated 
from such a source. Furthermore, it is difficult 
enough to believe that Mary persuaded such men as 
Matthew, Thomas, and later Saul that she had seen 
the risen Lord; but it is impossible to believe that 
she persuaded these and the other apostles and the 
five hundred to believe that they too had seen the 
Lord. 

Xot radically different from this is the theory of 
Strauss that the appearances of Jesus were merely 
visionary, a theory which has proved popular with 
some because it does not implicate the disciples in 
conscious fraud. The visions were realistic, but not 
real: the disciples were sincere, but mistaken. To 
this it has been well replied : "Where was the pre- 
possession or the fixed idea or the state of expectancy 



The Witness of the Empty Tomb, 169 

that would give rise to such visions?" 1 Such an 
occurrence would violate all the probabilities of 
known psychological science. 

One can say without hesitation that even if it 
were possible to believe that one disciple in the midst 
of his gloom might have seen this vision like a sun- 
burst over his night, it would still be impossible to 
conceive how not only one but several, not only 
women but men as well, not separately but in 
groups and in congregations, by night and by day, 
in closed rooms and "in the open," should have seen 
the same vision at the same time and lose the vision 
just as simultaneously as they had acquired it. 

It is logically possible to believe that one religious 
freak or fanatic or genius might dream out a 
scheme of religion and fill it in with alleged facts, 
appearances, etc.; but it is absolutely impossible to 
believe that this multitude of witnesses should hap^ 
pen to or agree to create by visions this risen Lord 
who perfectly completes on a divine and supernat- 
ural scale the Christ life of the Gospels and should 
give us "this same Jesus," though in new and un- 
thought-of relations, with the world-wide passion 
in his heart, the world-wide commission on his lips, 
ascending in glory to glo>ry and leaving behind him 
a Church small and weak, but conscious that the 
gates of hell could not prevail against it. This is 
to substitute five hundred impossible miracles for 

1 Bishop Candler, "Christus Auctor," page 86. 



170 Witnesses to the Word, 

the one miracle, transcendent indeed, but reasonable 

in such a lite plan as the gospel and with such a 
person as Jesus. 

As Dr. Bruce says: "All naturalistic attempts to 
explain away the resurrection up to this date have 
turned out failures. The physical resurrection re- 
mains." 1 

'"Apologetics." Quoted by Dr. Alexander in "Son of Man." 



CHAPTER VII. 
The Bible the Hope of the World. 

THE Bible is by all odds the foremost book in 
the world. Whether it is considered divine or 
human, it must be acknowledged to be supreme 
among earth i s. Sixty-six pamphlets, separat- 

ed in time over a period of a thousand years or 
more, written by some forty or more different writ- 
vaching the chief nations of ancient history, 
come together into an inseparable and imperishable 

ume. The learning of the world did not give it 
birth. The power of earth did not protect it. Yet, 
in spite of scorn from the one and persecution from 
the other, these writings have been preserved, cop- 
ied, translated, and spread abroad to the uttermost 
parts of the earth. 

Philosophers and sages, poets and orators, histo- 
rians and moralists have not received such homage. 
The correctness of its text is certified to by a multi- 
tude of manuscripts so great, so old, and so well au- 
thenticated as to put the Bible in a class by itself 
among ancient books. Some important classical 

rks can claim only one manuscript known to be 
still in existence; for the others ten or fifteen is 
thought to be a large number, and but few of these 
date back earlier than the tenth century of our era. 
"The manuscripts of whole or parts of the New 

(i 7 i) 



172 Witnesses to the Word. 

Testament are already reckoned by thousands, the 
oldest of which go back to the fourth and fifth cen- 
turies, and parts are still older." 

No book has ever been so widely translated. The 
first three centuries saw the Bible translated into 
Latin, Syriac, and Coptic. The next three centuries 
gave the Word to the Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, 
Libyan, and Ethiopic languages. About 600 A.D. 
the Bible was known in eight languages, and in each 
of them several attempts at translating had been 
made. In the next period the spread of Christianity 
is witnessed by the fact that the Bible was translated, 
at least in part, into the Arabic and Slavonic from 
the Greek and into the German, Anglo-Saxon, Celt- 
ic, and French from the Latin. But it is from the 
thirteenth century on that the work of building the 
great vernacular Bibles began on a larger scale. 

Now the Bible can be read in all the civilized lan- 
guages of the world, and there is "hardly a language 
among uncivilized tribes of any importance into 
which this marvelous Book has not been rendered." 
The total number of versions is about five hundred. 
It makes itself at home in every language, and each 
native feels that it talks in his own tongue and to his 
own heart. Wherever it has gone its pages have 
been the pathways of progress, and its leaves have 
been for the healing of the nations. 

Seldom, if ever, has the Bible been put for the 
first time into the native speech and into the hands 
of the common people of any nation that it has not 



The Bible the Hope of the World. 173 

made a new era in its language and life and set all 
its commerce, politics, art, literature, and morals to 
the music of an ascending scale. 

Every year fifteen million copies of the Scriptures, 
in whole or in part, are scattered to the four corners 
of the earth. The nineteenth century, in giving 
many other marvelous gifts to man, gave three hun- 
dred and sixteen million volumes of the Bible. 

Its pictures have been painted, its heroes chiseled, 
its songs set to music, its' language quoted, its inci- 
dents recited, so that one might say that the flood 
tides of literature, art, and oratory have left Scrip- 
ture marks upon all the walls of time. Tennyson is 
said to refer to Biblical subjects three hundred times ; 
Longfellow, even more; Shakespeare has over five 
hundred allusions to the Bible ; and Bacon shows its 
influence in almost every essay. 

Let us trace the influence of this Book on civiliza- 
tion and see if it is not, indeed, the hope of the world. 
Consider the failure o»f ancient paganism. What a 
world of weltering chaos was that Greek and Ro- 
man society into which the Word of God came! 

The triple crown of civilization is the same in all 
ages — 'religion, government, the family. Where 
these three no longer abide, dissolution and despair, 
like birds of doom, croak over all the doors of a 
nation's hope. This triple crown was lying in the 
dust of the Forum, trampled by the hasty feet of the 
tyrant, the skeptic, and the libertine. The old reli- 
gion was a spent force. The easy-going Roman 



i/4 Witnesses to the Word. 

conscience found a place in the Pantheon for all the 
gods of earth, and to the sophisticated and self- 
sufficient Roman spirit they were all alike bereft of 
faith and full of fraud. Religion of some sort is 
the vital breath without which the body of morality 
soon becomes a putrefying corpse. Dissoluteness 
flooded society, and the foundations of social purity 
and moral wholeness were almost universally re- 
moved. Occidental desire met the refinements of 
Oriental vice on the banks of the Tiber. The luxury 
of a world's wealth was at their disposal, and the 
license of unbridled passion and power allured them. 
There sprang from the loins of ancient Rome a 
monstrous progeny. St. Paul gives one flashlight 
photograph in his great first chapter of Romans. 

Man was degraded below the level of the brute 
and claimed an altitude above that of the angels. 
The same age that saw Nero a monster hailed him 
as a god. For Gibbon says the Roman emperor was 
"at once priest, atheist, and god." 

The Roman populace lusted for the thrill of war 
which they no longer had the hardihood to endure 
for themselves ; and so the arena is made a miniature 
battle field, and the ecstasies of the dying hour are 
relished by the boys and girls and men and women 
of Rome. 

The home did not survive the downfall of reli- 
gion. Marriage fell into such disuse that the em- 
perors in vain set a premium upon matrimony to in- 
duce a dissolute society to observe some conventional 



The Bible the Hope of the World. 175 

decency. The marriage bond became a rope of sand 
in rotten Rome. Religion had no power to restrain, 
society no standards strong enough to check. 

In such a world childhood had little chance. In- 
fanticide and the exposure of infants was not a 
clandestine crime to hide a secret sin, But a common 
and recognized practice. Only under Christian 
teaching has the child had its rightful place in the 
midst of affection and tender solicitude. 

A world in which the body is the only reality, in 
which the soul, God, and immortality are ignored, 
will never and can never make a noble and illus- 
trious womanhood ; but just the creature the woman 
of paganism has always been — stupid, ignorant, 
enslaved, dupe or decoy, as the case may be, of man, 
but never his equal and inspiration. In that dark 
world immorality did not bar a woman from social 
position. Some of those who were most attractive 
and sought after were notoriously immoral. "As- 
pasia bore a sullied name, as did Sappho, Lais, Cleo- 
patra, Agrippina, and many others. That class of 
women, who with us are excluded from society, 
were not only flattered and sought after, but seem 
to have been recruited from those who were the 
most attractive for their intellectual gifts as well 
as for physical beauty. No woman, if bright, witty, 
and beautiful, was avoided because she was im- 
moral." 

The woman who aspired to fame for her culti- 
vated gifts and who sought to shine in the banquets 



176 Witnesses to the Word. 

of society and who was capacitated to do so by su- 
perior intellectual and social charms advertised her- 
self as belonging to what we consider the excluded 
class. Society in Rome meant men and this class oi 
women. The entrance of women into society for its 
uplift is a Christian achievement. 

Paganism adorned and educated its women for 
purposes of evil ; Christianity, to make them conspic- 
uous for superior usefulness and bright with beau- 
tiful ministries. Virtuous womanhood in Rome was 
left dull, stupid, ignorant, and inferior to men. At 
last religion, family, and government go down in 
ruin together. 

To the truthfulness of this picture bear witness 
the poets and writers of the day. Horace and Juve- 
nal agree with Seneca, who says: "All things are 
full of iniquity and vice. More crime is committed 
than can be remedied by restraint. We struggle in 
a contest of criminality. Daily the passion for sin 
is greater ; the shame in committing it is less. Wick- 
edness is no longer committed in secret; it flaunts 
before our eyes. Innocence is not rare, but nonex- 
istent." 

Such was the failure of ancient paganism; such 
the world into which the religion of the Bible came. 
Without the assistance of a divine revelation the 
human mind can never climb higher than the Athe- 
nian intellect. Human character, by innate tendency 
and heroic effort without God, will never show lof- 
tier courage, tougher fiber, finer self-control, more 



The Bible the Hope of the World. ijj 

instinctive integrity than the older Romans. All 
that taste, intellect, grace and beauty, valor and hon- 
or ("of the earth, earthy") could accomplish had 
been done. The fairest civilization the world had 
ever seen was crumbling. The strongest stock moth- 
er earth had ever bred was degenerate and all but 
dead. The world was without a hope or a future. 

"Ere she gain her heavenly best, 
A God must mingle in the game." 

This was the fullness of time for God to com- 
plete his revelation of salvation by grace through 
faith in the Person of his Son. Such was the world 
into which the religion of the Bible came. 

The new religion was a life, but the fountain of 
its life was its Holy Scripture. It was in this sense 
a religion of a Book. To those who understand it 
this Book was its "rock of defense''; to others it 
was its rock of offense and stone of stumbling. 
Against this Book, as we have already seen, perse- 
cution beat in most malignant fury. The possession 
of one or more of these sacred rolls was spiritually 
an exalted privilege, but politically it was a deadly 
peril. To read these Scriptures in public or private 
exposed the reader to the death penalty. Deacon 
Euplus, of Catania, in Sicily, was apprehended by 
the sheriff in the act of reading the Gospel. He 
carried the roll with him to the judge, read from it 
aloud at his trial, and declared that it was better to 
die than to surrender his Bible. From it he had 
12 



178 Witnesses to the Word. 

drawn his highest inspirations, and to it he gave his 
last and highest proofs of devotion. Sometimes a 
gathering of men and women were arrested while 
reading the Bible and the whole company carried 
away to torture. Primitive Christianity was a Bible- 
loving religion; and primitive Christians expressed 
their loyalty to the Saviour, whom chey had not seen, 
by devotion to his Word, which they had seen. The 
faith soon appears in all parts of the empire, and 
everywhere it appears the same in its outstanding 
features. The Christ passion is the unfailing sign 
and essential quality of Christian experience, and 
the Scriptures were always and everywhere its 
source and inspiration. Wherever the religion pre- 
vailed the Bible became the rule of life, and its 
heavenly ideals began at once to bear holy fruit. 
There sprang up in Caesar's household saints and in 
Caesar's kingdom a Christian society where purity 
of morals, piety of heart, and charity of life adorned 
the lives of those who had been devotees of licen- 
tiousness, avarice, and greed. Marriage became a 
hallowed institution presided over by the Lord him- 
self, whose presence at the feast turns the waters of 
earthly love into the pure wine of heavenly devotion, 
which is always best at the last. 

Charity, not unknown before, took on new mean- 
ing, and brotherhood was born among men who 
recognized themselves as children of the same Fa- 
ther. A heathen writer jeered at their love for one 
another and said : "Their Master has persuaded 



The Bible the Hope of the World. 179 

them that they are all brothers." Woman was ex- 
alted to equality with man, and the home became the 
chief glory and peculiar creation of the religion of 
the Bible. The gladiatorial shows passed away be- 
fore the spread of the Scriptural conception o>f man 
as a being of infinite dignity and immortal worth. 
The heathen looked on in amazement at institutions 
springing up of which paganism had never dreamed 
— institutions for the care of the poor, the orphan, 
the aged, the helpless, the fallen, and the leper. As 
Lecky says : "It has covered the globe with countless 
institutions of mercy absolutely unknown to the 
whole pagan world." 

The Christian party became the aggressive and 
life-giving force in that senescent realm of the 
Caesars. By the time the scepter fell from their 
enfeebled grasp the Church had solidarity enough 
and a bishop with genius enough to become the 
guardians of the sacred lamps of history. Leo be- 
came the real ruler and was the providential man 
who was the "hiding place" when Goth, Hun, and 
Vandal respected more this voice of the Church than 
the legions that had once filled the earth. So it was 
the Church that held the falling empire together 
until the new Europe was providentially prepared 
to receive the fertilizing fragments where they fell. 
Like Joshua, she stayed the twilight of civilization 
until events had shaped themselves to make the night 
of the Dark Ages endurable, blown through with 
winds of promise of a coming day. 



i So Witnesses to the Word. 

The result was that civilization did not die, 
though it suffered an eclipse. The missionary from 
Rome was busy in that midnight hour, carrying the 
light as he went, kindling the fires that were to make 
all Europe blaze with Christian truth. YVe have 
talked much of Christianity saving old Rome, but 
saving new Europe was vastly more important. 

This period of Volkerwanderungen. as the Ger- 
mans call the migrations of the nations, was a dark 
and bitter stretch of years. But even here the bow 
is in the cloud. Nowhere is the hand of God more 
evident or the influence of the Bible more plainly 
seen than in the history of the Ostrogoths under 
their celebrated king, Theodoric. The pagan van- 
dals came to pillage and left behind them a tradition 
of plunder that gave the word ''vandalism" to the 
world. "But the noble tribe of the Ostrogoths, un- 
der their celebrated leader, Theodoric, called Die- 
trich von Bern in the German songs, tried another 
plan. They adopted Roman civilization as far as 
possible and endeavored to combine both nations 
under one dominion.'''' The Roman noble. Cassio- 
dorus, the most celebrated scholar of the time, was 
his Secretary of State. The reports and letters of 
this man are still extant and show how. in addition 
to his Roman law training, he was influenced by 
Christianity and the reading of the Bible. Later in 

1 Von Dobschiitz. "Influence of the Bible on Civilization," 
page 48. 



The Bible the Hope of the World. 181 

his life he founded a monastery and, entering it 
himself, devoted his life to the study of God's Word. 

But long before this the Bible had begun its in- 
fluence among the Ostrogoths. Ulfilas (310-380) 
was bishop o>f the Goths for forty years and gave 
to them his famous Gothic Bible. "Ulfilas not only 
did the work of translation probably of the entire 
Bible, but he invented an alphabet for it, using as a 
basis the Greek uncial alphabet, with preservation of 
its orders, as well as the numerical and phonetic value 
of the letters. He adapted it to its purpose by the 
use of forms taken from the Latin and the Runic 
alphabet, creating a system better for the purpose 
than either of the three." 1 The Church gave to the 
Goths the noble Bishop Ulfilas and his monumental 
Gothic Bible. Centuries go by, and the bread cast 
upon the waters comes back. The Goths were Ari- 
ans; but the Bible had been planted in their life, and 
its influence is seen in the character of their great 
leader and in their attitude toward the old civiliza- 
tion and the Christian religion. Some of the Goths 
had sacked Rome, it is true; but it was the pagan 
patricians and not the Christians, the palaces and 
not the Churches, that felt their fury. But for Ul- 
filas and his Bible, Theodoric might have been an 
unchecked Attila and the course of history very 
different. 

The influence of the Bible can be seen not only in 

^'Universal Cyclopedia," article on "Gothic Language." 



1 82 Witnesses to the Word. 

broad outline at this era, but in smaller details. 
Theodosius ordered the Bible placed in the court 
rooms for use in taking the oath, and the worn con- 
dition of the first chapter of John's Gospel in many 
extant manuscripts shows frequent use for that 
purpose. 1 

The influence of the Bible can be seen again in 
the laws on Sabbath observance. Constantine had 
ordered that no courts should sit on Sunday. Theo- 
dosius had enacted stricter laws, and Justinian made 
Sunday a legal holiday. 

One wonders how the missionary strategy of the 
Church kept itself so clear through all these political 
and social cataclysms until he remembers that it was 
the influence of the Bible that kept the Church Chris- 
tian, fired the monks with zeal as they read it in their 
cells, and filled their hearts with visions of the "re- 
gions beyond." At mass they would hear the gos- 
pel read. "Every one that hath left houses, or breth- 
ren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or 
lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundred- 
fold [here], and shall inherit eternal life [hereaft- 
er] ." They would hear this with ascetic ears and go 
forth to seek some far-distant and desert place. Thus 
the Iro-Scottish and Anglo-Saxon monks were filled 
with missionary zeal. Thus YVillibrord and Boni- 
face crossed the North Sea and preached among the 



^on Dobschiitz, "Influence of the Bible on Civilization," 
page 31. 



The Bible the Hope of the World. 183 

Frisians and Saxons. Beneath Ireland is Patrick; 
beneath England is Augustine; beneath Germany is 
Boniface; beneath Scandinavia is Ansgar. 

In all these centuries the Bible was not denied to 
the laity ; but under repeated shocks the old civiliza- 
tion was crumbling and its light growing dimmer, 
until at last the night of ignorance settled down. 
The very form of the old Roman Empire ceased to 
be. Few were left who could read at all, even among 
the clergy, especially in Gaul ; and many a rich mon- 
astery had not even a copy of the Bible in its posses- 
sion. Before the coming of this night the Bible was 
supreme in the Catholic Church and had no rival in 
her affections. She emerges from the age of scho- 
lasticism with the Apocrypha a part of the canon, the 
voice of tradition supreme over the Scripture, and 
the Bible denied to the laity. 

The long night began to break with the coming of 
Charlemagne, well named the Great, who esteemed 
the Bible the great textbook for his people. He 
brought Alcuin from England to revise the text of 
the Bible and made him abbot of the monastery at 
Tours, where the scholars gathered to do the work. 
The influence of the Bible in the civilization which 
Charlemagne founded can be seen in three main par- 
ticulars. From the sixth century synods and coun- 
cils had sought to enforce the obligation of observ- 
ing Sunday in a more solemn fashion. They did 
not at first base this duty on the fourth command- 
ment or demand that manual labor cease, but Char- 



184 Witnesses to the Word. 

lemagne bases his law expressly on the Old Testa- 
ment commandment and commands the strictest ob- 
servance of the day. The second particular is the 
law of the tithe. That which was first paid volun- 
tarily by Christians comes at last to be demanded by 
the priest, and Charlemagne shapes the law of the 
empire to meet this demand. The farmer must pay 
his tithe to his parish priest. Charlemagne, in the 
third place, took Deuteronomy xxiii. 19 as his guide 
and made the flat prohibition against taking interest 
a part of the public law. 

The Dark Ages pass at last, and history has a new 
birth. We see an "emergence of nations whose im- 
pulse is upward; and Christian civilization begins, 
full of living, purifying, and ascending forces." Be- 
neath it all is the religion of the Bible, keeping alive 
the old learning and planting schools and universi- 
ties in the twilight of the new day. 

As the Middle Ages come to a close it is an open 
Bible that guides Europe to a greater light. Be- 
neath modern England is Wycliffe ; beneath modern 
Germany is Luther; beneath Scotland is Knox; and 
and shining like a star for all Western Europe is 
Calvin, and each man with an open Bible in his hand. 

What makes our world different from pagan 
Rome? Not "railroads versus Roman highways 
nor mail trains versus messengers, not telegrams 
versus signals nor the printed page versus written 
manuscript nor gattling guns in lieu of battering- 
rams" ; but the spirit of our life, the spiritual ideals 



The Bible the Hope of the World. 185 

of progress and reform, of government and society. 
This has come from the Bible in the hands of the 
missionary and, later on, in the hands of the trans- 
lator and the expounder. Let the map of the world 
tell to-day what the open Bible, civil and religious 
liberty, and evangelical religion, or the lack of it, 
will do for a people. 

No wonder Huxley says of the Bible : "Through- 
out the history of the Western world the Scriptures, 
Jewish and Christian, have been the great instigators 
of revolt against the worst forms of clerical and po- 
litical despotism. The Bible has been the Magna 
Charta of the poor and of the oppressed. 1 For three 
centuries this book has been woven into the life of 
all that is best and noblest in English history. It has 
become the national epic of Britain, it is written in 
the noblest and purest English, and abounds in ex- 
quisite beauties of mere literary form. By the study 
of what other book could children be so much hu- 
manized and made to feel that each figure in that 
vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but a 
momentary space in the interval between two eterni- 
ties and earns the blessings or the curses of all 
times according to its efforts to do good and hate 
evil?" 2 

Modern paganism has shown itself as inadequate 



1 Huxley, "Essays upon Controverted Questions," Prologue, 
pages 52, 53- 

2 Huxley, "Critiques and Addresses," page 61. 



i86 Witnesses to the Word* 

to meet the needs of men as the classical religions of 
the Roman world. Let us take a brief, but I trust 
not superficial, survey of the non-Christian religions 
of to-day.. 

Africa, the ash heap, is answer to the mongrel 
faiths that hold sway there. Man-stealing and can- 
nibalism do not exhaust the record of her griefs and 
grievances. I can hear Mr. Hotchkiss saying now. 
as he spoke at the Maeon Laymen's Convention: 
"There are no graveyards in Africa." The jackal 
is undertaker and sexton all in one. 

India is the answer to Hinduism, with her temple- 
sheltered obscenity, with her one hundred and twen- 
ty-eight million illiterate women, 1 her child mar- 
riages (eight million two hundred thousand girls 
married under the age of fourteen), 2 her child wid- 
ows, her girl babies (one-third of whom are secretly 
murdered as soon as born), 3 and eighty-one per cent* 
of her married women preferring suicide to the liv- 
ing immolation of Hindu wifehood — this is answer 
enough. 

China is answer enough to Confucianism and 
Buddhism — over ninety-nine per cent of her women 
and ninety per cent of her men illiterate, her girl 
babies murdered by the tens of thousands 5 every 
year, her moral and physical filth, her intellectual 



1 Dennis, "Christian Missions and Social Progress," Volume 
L, page 107. "Ibid., page 119. *Ibid., page 133. i Ibid. J page 95. 
B /Wtf., page 131. 



The Bible the Hope of the World. 187 

pendulum swinging between deceit and conceit, her 
fantastic science, her nightmare of medical practice, 
the prey of pestilence, the victim of flood and fam- 
ine, haunted by superstitious terror — '"awaiting the 
manifestation of the sons of God." 

Japan is losing faith in her ancestral gods, but in 
her nervous haste to be wise she has not learned to 
begin in the fear of the Lord; without home life or 
any word to express it, her womanhood can lose 
character without losing caste. Her brilliant and 
brave-hearted people will never find rest till they 
build their national life on the Bible as the written 
Word • and on Christian experience as the living 
voice of God. 

These religions are without hope for the future. 
"Hinduism teaches that God is near, but forgets that 
he is holy. Mohammedanism teaches that God is 
just, but forgets that he is loving." 1 Buddhism 
teaches that life is fleeting, but forgets that soul and 
service endure through all eternity. Confucianism 
teaches that human relationships are holy, but for- 
gets that the supreme relations are religious and that 
God is the goal for every soul. 

The evils of Christian lands exist in spite of the 
protest of the religion of the Bible. The evils of 
heathen lands are imbedded in religious traditions 
and "derive their most terrible power from the reli- 



1 Robert E. Speer, in lecture on "The Non-Christian Reli- 
gions Inadequate." 



1 88 Witnesses to the Word. 

gious sanctions by which they are surrounded." 1 
Everywhere paganism has taught salvation by 
works and has effected always a divorce between 
religion and morals, Christianity teaches salvation 
by grace through faith and identifies character with 
piety. 

Mohammedanism has found or made a desert 
wherein it has gone, and Dr. Cochran declares that 
he has not found a single pure-hearted or pure-lived 
adult man among the Mohammedans of Persia. 2 
Buddhism is a sterile and paralyzing faith. No 
Buddhist nation ever set up a patent office or ever 
wrought a great achievement. Some Hindu lan- 
guages have no word for "chaste" as applied to men. 
The contribution of Buddhism to society is a para- 
lyzed personality; the contribution of Confucianism 
to society is an impoverished personality; the con- 
tribution of Hinduism to society is a degraded per- 
sonality; the contribution of Mohammedanism to 
society is an enslaved personality. 3 Such religions 
cannot meet the intellectual, social, and moral needs 
of men. They have no conception of a holy God, 
no fixed standards of morality, no adequate sanc- 
tions O'f character. 

The religious future of the race is wrapped up, 
not in them, but in the religion of the Bible. It 

^Robert E. Speer, lecture on "Non-Christian Religions In- 
adequate." 2 Ibid. 

3 Dennis, "Christian Missions and Social Progress," Volume 
I., pages 382-391. 



The Bible the Hope of the World. 189 

wins the same victories in heathen lands to-day that 
it did in Rome and Corinth. A cruel and murder- 
ous Zulu chief becomes in the second generation a 
preacher and in the third a college president. I 
heard this college president speak at the World's 
Sunday School Convention at Washington, D. C, 
in 1910. 

The Fiji Islands turn from cannibalism to become 
a self-supporting Christian Church, sending out 
missionaries to the islands about them. 1 India has 
written a new Acts of the Apostles. China, under 
the stimulus of the Christian religion, is seeking in 
one great fourfold movement to modernize her edu- 
cation, emancipate her women, constitutionalize her 
government, and throttle her opium trade. 

"Christianity brings new energies, new ideals, and 
new hopes. Its historic record in all ages reveals a 
wonderful and subtle power to develop unexpected, 
even unsuspected, capacities in individual men and 
to crystallize character in society. It can do what 
nothing else can accomplish: it can make alive. It 
possesses the power of moral change and the secret 
of a quickened conscience. It can renew and trans- 
form the man." 2 

"Let us not forget that Christianity, like its Mas- 
ter and Lord, is 'chiefest among ten thousand' and 
that the holy seed planted in heathen soil must bring 



1 Dennis, "Christian Missions and Social Progress," Volume 
I., page 415. 2 Ibid., page 450. 



190 Witnesses to the Word. 

forth after its kind if it is to survive and flourish. 
God's supremacy can allow of no partnership. His 
personality cannot be interpreted in terms of pan- 
theism. His spirituality will tolerate no idolatry. 
His incarnation is once for all consummated in Jesus 
of Xazareth. His Spirit is alone the only possible 
source of regenerate life. His atonement can give 
no place to legalism. His holiness can make no 
compromise with sin. And Christianity throughout 
all its essential features can neither acknowledge the 
coordinate authority nor share the honors of pres- 
tige with any other religion. If it is true to itself 
in this respect, there need be no doubt of its suffi- 
ciency. It has wrought with unrivaled master}- in 
the past. It is still achieving its victories, both at 
home and abroad, in the present generation. It 
retains every element of power. It holds every se- 
cret of past success. It is still as fully capable of 
leadership and as able to subsidize and transform 
for its high purposes all the forces of modern times 
as it has always been in the past. The wonder, the 
magic — the divine wisdom, rather — of Christianity 
is its power of adjusting itself to all human environ- 
ments and of Christianizing without destroying 
them. It transcends with its spiritual influence the 
institutions, laws, and customs of nations and sum- 
mons to its service literature, science, art, and in- 
ventions.''' 1 

1 Dennis, "Christian Missions and Social Progress," Volume 
I., page 463. 



The Bible the Hope of the World. 191 

The nineteenth century has matched the first in 
wonders of grace. The twentieth will exceed the 
second in the victories o>f the cross. Nations that 
have "lain among the pots" for thousands of years 
"shall be like a dove whose wings are covered with 
silver and whose feathers with pure gold." Chris- 
tianity has yet the dew of its youth, and the Bible is 
the hope of the world. 



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